Beethoven played in period costume with songs and a narrator – The Bonn Man by City Chamber Orchestra of Hong Kong aims to bring composer to life
- Part classical music concert, part play, The Bonn Man mixes excerpts from Beethoven works with narration and song from actor and baritone Micah Sandt
- With a script by the orchestra’s artistic director Leanne Nicholls, the production – a delayed birthday tribute to Beethoven – aims to put his music in context
“Anyone can put together a concert playing Beethoven’s symphonies. But to create something like this, it’s a totally different story,” says Leanne Nicholls, founder and artistic director of the City Chamber Orchestra of Hong Kong (CCOHK), of its upcoming show “The Bonn Man”.
Part-classical music concert, part-play, the programme was one of many performances meant for last year’s 250th anniversary of Ludwig van Beethoven’s birth but delayed by the coronavirus pandemic that shut performance venues and limited public gatherings.
Nicholls, who wrote the script in English, says Ries would have been familiar with both Beethoven’s public life and his private struggles and therefore a plausible narrator of Beethoven’s rise to fame, his doomed love affairs and his tragic loss of hearing.
The orchestra, all dressed in period costumes, will perform excerpts from a wide selection of music, including Beethoven’s symphonies, piano sonatas and his piano concerto No. 4 (with Yoonie Han as soloist).
Nicholls says having an actor narrate and sing in between the music can help depict the contours of Beethoven’s dramatic and troubled life.