Beethoven-Paraphrase

This score grew from a Beethoven-inspired piano miniature, Weit entfernt und doch so nah (So far and yet so near), reflecting on our distance from yet proximity to the great composer. Höller’s music has long employed ‘sound shapes’ akin to the Beethovenian motive, providing a seed from which development can germinate, and his Beethoven-Paraphrase is no exception. In the first section musical ciphers of Beethoven’s first and last names are heard, as in the source piano piece. The second section turns to the defiantly rebellious gesture at the opening of Beethoven’s Coriolanus Overture, with the material absorbed, remodelled and confronted with the first section’s motives. This working out captures the ‘paraphrase’ of the title, referring to the word’s original meaning as described by Höller: “the explanatory reformulation of a concept or fact. In other words, something that already exists is being renegotiated”.