For many people, Beethoven is the greatest composer who ever lived. In this portrait-in-sound, actors’ readings combine with his music to reveal a titanic personality, both vulnerable and belligerent, comic and tragic, and above all heroic, as he comes to grips with perhaps the greatest disability a musician can suffer. No man’s music is more universal, few men’s lives are more inspiring. In every sense but one – his modest height – he was a giant.

This series presents the life and work of the major composers. The recording is illustrated with quotations from the composer and his contemporaries, enhanced by extended extracts from representative works. In the companion booklet are essays and notes on the composer and his times.