The greatBeethoven lives.

[distantfieldrelative]

Suppose that I have brought Ludwig back from the dead. This time with added hearing! Sure he will enjoy the sounds of the forest and of people voices.

However, there is a much more pressing matter to attend to than the voices of mear mortals.

What do we perform for him first?!
 The op.133 Grosse Fugue...

Or his 9th Symphony?!

The madness!!! What is he more what to hear?
Help!!!

[marijn1999]

I don't think either of those two. Maybe the Ariett from Op. 111?

BW,
Marijn

[distantfieldrelative]

Funny enough I had remembered that I forgot about the op.111 once I had signed out and decided to not log back in because I am lazy. But yes, that also is a contender.

[klavieronin]

Wouldn't he have already heard his own works in his head? From what I understand about composers with perfect pitch (and Beethoven was one of them) is that they can know exactly what music sounds like just by looking at the score, the same way the rest of us know what a word sounds like just by reading it. I suggest you play him some Katy Perry and Taylor Swift and tell him these are the most successful musicians alive today… then watch him crawl into a ball and start weeping…

…or is that too cruel?

[distantfieldrelative]

Good point. However as a composer I can say first hand that hearing your music in your head and hearing your music in the air are two different things.

And please no! I'm afraid that if we play anything after Rachmaninoff he will do just that. Or worst... He may enjoy it!!! 😱

[ahinton]

Why not play him some Bruckner, Brahms, Wagner, Mahler? Why not play him his nine symphonies in Liszt's piano arrangements?

Best,

Alistair

[distantfieldrelative]

The way I remember was that Beethoven had a bit of an ego.

Out of everything he could listen to I would assume that he would be most concerned with his own music; especially the late works.
 As for the transcriptions. Why not just listen to an orchestra?

The fly may bite the horse but that does not make it greater than the horse.
Unless Liszt himself were playing it may be difficult to find someone who can produce the same effect as an orchestra.

[rubinsteinmad]

The Emperor Concerto, performed by a huge  orchestra, on a Imperial Bosendorfer.
Maybe the Choral Fantasy


(In his time, orchestras were much smaller, and the pianos were not near the standard of Imperial Bosendorfers <333333)