Music that will endure for all time
“In 1984 I was heading east from Cyprus to Lebanon, the only passenger on a ship that was steaming towards Beirut, a city in the grip of civil war. At midnight I went up on deck. I could see a red haze on the horizon. We were steaming towards it. I took my battered old Walkman out of my pocket and played Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony. Suddenly the world seemed put to right again.
“This is music the world needs to hear, and will hear, for ever. That is why I dedicated ‘Beethoven — The Man Revealed’ to ‘My children, grandchildren and their children, safe in the knowledge that all will know Beethoven’s music.’”