Charles Hazlewood: Beethoven and Me, Sky Arts, review: A deeply original and thought-provoking film

Conductor Charles Hazlewood was an emotional and invested presenter

Beethoven’s thunderous, tempestuous music has always been a complicated subject for conductor Charles Hazlewood.

In the poignant Charles Hazlewood: Beethoven and Me, he explained how the parallels between the sexual abuse he suffered as a child and violence experienced by the young Beethoven had framed his relationship with the composer.

This was a deeply original and thought-provoking way of marking the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth and Hazlewood was an earnest, compelling guide.

Hazlewood is the founder of Paraorchestra, the integrated orchestra made up of both disabled and non-disabled musicians. So it made sense that his film would touch on Beethoven’s deafness, with visually impaired soprano Victoria Oruwari describing the “golden feeling” Beethoven’s stirring Fifth Symphony unlocked in her head.

Hazlewood spoke wrenchingly about his childhood and the legacy of extreme OCD he has had to live with as a result. He revealed he almost envied Beethoven, who had largely suffered physical rather than sexual abuse.

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This, he continued, explained why he found Beethoven “knotty”, yet there was also something exhilarating about the way the composer’s work proceeded from “darkness to triumph”. “That blaze of finding a new dawn – I literally go weak at the knees,” he said.

He spoke with restraint. And yet the emotion in his voice was unmistakable as he unpacked his traumatic experiences. It made for a powerful conclusion to a documentary that was much more than simply a beginner’s guide to a colossus of classical music.

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