Beethoven - I Shall Hear in Heaven

“Tama Matheson has created a wonderful play... It’s the best introduction to his life and work you could hope to experience. Really first class.” — [LondonTheatre1].

*  *  *  *  *

Experience the orchestral world premiere of Beethoven: I Shall Hear in Heaven, a powerful, award-winning music-play that will take listeners on a journey through Beethoven’s life and indomitable spirit.

Written by Tama Matheson and performed by Tama Matheson,  Suzy Kohane, and Pacific Symphony, this special theatrical event includes excerpts from Beethoven's concertos, sonatas, and symphonies, including selections from the Sixth, Seventh, and Ninth.

NOTE: We expect high demand on these concerts—exchanges will be limited.

Preview Talk at 7 p.m. with Classical California midday host Alan Chapman.

*  *  *  *  *

I Shall Hear in Heaven brings to life in a unique dramatic form the tumultuous, devastating, and triumphant tale of Ludwig van Beethoven – one of the most inspiring, tragic, and powerful figures in Western cultural history. 

Performed amid a concert of Beethoven’s own music, I Shall Hear in Heaven is an unprecedentedly powerful picture of an artist, and a dazzling combination of words and music – the two art forms working together to create a thrillingly new and deeply powerful form of entertainment, and a rich picture of the composer’s extraordinary life.

Beginning with the composer’s childhood, in which his father oppresses him in the attempt to make his son into a second Mozart, the play follows Beethoven through all the tribulations and triumphs of his life, and all the curious and amazing circumstances that made him what he was: his abused youth, his discovery of music as a refuge, his early recognition by Mozart, his emergence as the greatest virtuoso of his day, his failed love-affairs, his irremediable and shattering deafness, and, most movingly of all, his refusal to submit to that debilitating infirmity. 

As deafness claims him, Beethoven resolves not to be conquered, but to conquer, vowing to ascend, on the pinions of music, to the very height of artistic endeavor. Thus Beethoven becomes, in the face of impossible odds, one of the greatest artists the world has ever seen.

Presented in a unique form, with music flooding the drama, and bursting forth in powerful moments, I Shall Hear in Heaven converts drama into music and music into drama, to shoot emotion directly into the audience’s heart. 

An irresistible picture of a titanic artist, and a moving tale of one of most extraordinary humans ever to walk the planet, I Shall Hear in Heaven is a new and a genre-defining play that makes music sound as it has never sounded before.