Description
Tom Beghin's new recording of Beethoven's Piano Sonatas Opus 109, 110, and 111 is an artistic exploration of how Beethoven's music making was shaped by the work environment he created with the help of colleagues and friends when, in the last phase of his life, he was coping with severe hearing loss.
For this recording, Tom Beghin performs Beethoven's trilogy of pianistic masterpieces on a magnificent new replica of Beethoven's Broadwood piano. He also uses a unique replica of the Gehörmaschine (hearing machine) that was mounted on the composer's piano in order to reproduce the sound Beethoven experienced when composing. The album Inside the Hearing Machine invites us into the multisensory playground of a deaf composer for whom the machine was more than a hearing aid and who interacted with his instrument through much more than sound.
The album includes an extensive booklet (96p) with essays by Tom Beghin, Martha de Francisco, Robin Wallace, and Thomas Wulfrank and as a bonus, this package contains a personal code that allows online streaming of exclusive video offering.
Recognised for his expertise in eighteenth-century music, Beghin is frequently invited to give concerts, workshops and lectures throughout North America and Europe. In 2013 he inaugurated the first replica of Beethoven's 1817 Broadwood piano at the Concertgebouw in Bruges and the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn, playing among others Beethoven's "Hammerklavier" Sonata, Opus 106. In 2004 the Haydn-Institut inducted him as a member. Released by Naxos on Blu-ray (2009) and CD/DVD (2011) is a complete recording of Haydn's solo keyboard works, performed on seven different types of instruments in nine "virtual rooms." Hailed as "one of the most audacious recording enterprises in recent memory" (blu-ray.com), The Virtual Haydn was nominated for a 2011 Juno for "Music DVD of the Year." Tom Beghin is currently Senior Researcher at the Orpheus Institute in Ghent (Belgium).