Felder completes composer trilogy with 'Beethoven' premiere

By PAM KRAGEN - Staff Writer | Wednesday, May 7, 2008 3:08 PM PDT ∞

This month, Old Globe audiences will be the first in the world to see Hershey Felder close the circle on his decade-in-the-making "Composers Sonata."

With the world premiere of "Beethoven, As I Knew Him: A True Story," Felder completes his trilogy of solo plays based on the lives of famous composers. Last season, the Montreal-born Felder performed the first two plays in the cycle ---- "George Gershwin Alone" and "Monsieur Chopin" ---- in sold-out runs at the Globe. He'll reprise them in June after the "Beethoven" premiere concludes.

Like the other two plays, "Beethoven, As I Knew Him" is a roughly 100-minute, intermissionless play with music written by and starring Felder (a piano prodigy who grew in Canada's Yiddish theater circuit) telling the composer's story in words and music from the piano bench.

"Gershwin Alone" features the brash, Brooklyn-born Jazz Age composer recounting his life up until his tragic 1937 death from a brain aneurysm at age 38. "Monsieur Chopin" finds the Polish composer Frederic Chopin in his Parisian salon a few years before his 1849 tuberculosis death at age 39, explaining his struggle with "melancholy" (bipolar disorder), his love affair with George Sand and his life and music.

The Beethoven play is set in 1870, more than 40 years after Beethoven's death. The story is told by Gerhard von Breuning (the son of Beethoven's best friend and neighbor), who as a 12-year-old made almost daily visits to Beethoven's Vienna apartment during the last two years of the composer's life. Von Breuning spent so much time with the ailing composer from 1825 to 1827 that Beethoven nicknamed him "hosenknopf" (German for "trouser button") because von Breuning stuck so near the ailing composer's bedside.

In 1874, von Breuning published a short book on his experiences, "Memories of Beethoven: From the House of the Black-Robed Spaniards" (the name of Beethoven's home), and that book serves as the basis for Felder's play.

The play features personal stories about Beethoven, flashbacks and performances of some of the composer's greatest works, including the "Moonlight" and "Pathetique" sonatas, the Gross Fugue, the "Emperor" concerto and selections from his Fifth and Ninth symphonies.

In a telephone interview from the Paris home he shares with wife, ex-Canadian prime minister Kim Campbell, Felder talked about his new play, Beethoven and what's next.

Q: How long have you been working on "Beethoven, As I Knew Him"?

A: I started on it about two years ago. It was really the play I wanted to do from the very first, back before Gershwin. But doing a Beethoven play was a hard sell 10 years ago. I thought it would be easier to approach this with Gershwin because he and his music are more accessible to audiences today.

Q: Although you play Gershwin and Chopin in the other two plays, you tell the Beethoven story from the perspective of a close friend. Why?

A: Because Beethoven was hard of hearing or deaf most of his adult life. I didn't want to be screaming at the audience. That forced me to find a new way to tell the story. Fortunately, this book existed, and I was able to base my story on von Breuning's first-hand observations. What turned me on about it was the little details about his life, like what Beethoven's apartment looked like. I discovered a lot of stories I didn't know that are so touching. The exploration of the hearing loss is the punch home.

Q: Beethoven has been depicted in movies, plays and books as a sort of mad genius. Do you see him that way?

A: I don't view him as the kind of angry, nasty man that we've seen depicted in movies. In my play, he's not the screaming, yelling lunatic, but a real man who was very sensitive and who encountered a great number of difficulties in his life.

Q: What do you find most interesting about Beethoven that you want to tell your audience?

A: It was this notion that through his music he could see so deep inside us as human beings. And he was such a groundbreaker. He taught us to hear music in a completely different way, because he didn't self-edit. He didn't hear things and say 'That doesn't sound right.' He just wrote what was in his imagination, and it was unlike anything that had come before.

Q: How did his deafness affect his compositions?

A: Beethoven didn't hear the same things that we hear. He heard something akin to it but it was more born from his imagination than anything else. His early works, when he was able to hear, were very powerful, but they didn't have the kind of invention they had later on. I think it fueled his imagination.

Q: How did you choose the music for this play?

A: We always go with the popular stuff first. We wanted music that most people would recognize.

Q: Do you have a favorite musical piece in the show?

A: So much of Beethoven is my favorite, it's hard to choose. I love everything that's in there.

Q: Of the three composers, which one do you admire the most and which of the three plays is your favorite?

A: The play I'm doing at the moment is always my favorite, so it's Beethoven right now, and then next month it will be Chopin and Gershwin. But Beethoven was the smartest of the lot.

Q: You've worked with director Joel Zwick on all three shows. How is he as a director?

A: Joel is the greatest editor in the world. I give him lots of material and he says if we're trying to build an elephant, everything that's not an elephant has to go.

Q: You've been touring with the Gershwin show for a decade and with the completion of the "Composer's Sonata," it looks like you'll be tied up doing these shows for several more years into the future. Do you find that daunting?

A: The Gershwin show is this frightening thing that refuses to die. But God bless Gershwin's music, the story and the public who loves it. It's a lovely, lovely thing. It's a gift horse one doesn't look in the mouth, and Chopin is still alive and now Beethoven is going. I'm getting offers for the "Sonata" all over the place. I've got to earn a living, but I can fit in other projects in between.

Q: What are some of your other projects?

A: Right now I'm focused on learning Beethoven. And I'm working on an opera that will be set in Paris. I try not to do more than two things at a time.

Q: Do you still get nervous before a performance or is it old hat doing these plays for a live audience?

A: Every accomplishment has its own set of nightmares. Instead of being afraid of getting through the first performance, you're afraid that you won't meet the expectations of the audience. If they come in expecting great things, I know I'm in trouble from the word 'go.' Over the years I've learned to be calmer about performing. It's the nature of the beast. This is what it is, and this is what I do.

Q: Your play has opened in previews the same weekend La Jolla Playhouse finished up its production of "33 Variations," Moises Kaufman's play with music about Beethoven's composition of the Diabelli Variations. How similar are the two plays? Any fear of Beethoven audience fatigue?

A: It's not a competition. They're really two very different stories with totally different repertoires. That's what makes Beethoven so wonderfully great. There's enough material about his life and his music to write dozens of plays without much crossover. Too much Beethoven is never enough Beethoven.

"Beethoven, As I Knew Him: A True Story"

When: 7 p.m. Sundays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays; 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays; 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays; through June 8

* "Monsieur Chopin" will run June 11 to 22

* "George Gershwin Alone" will run June 25-29

Where: Old Globe Theatre, Balboa Park, San Diego

Tickets: $52-$79

Phone: (619) 234-5623

Web: www.theoldglobe.org

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