Celtic Connections festival features 'Gaelic Songs For Beethoven'

Celtic Connections festival will be on from 17th to 3rd February, 2019. Celtic Connections, which started in 1994 in the Scottish city of Glasgow (Scottish Gaelic: Glaschu) been held every January since then. Featuring concerts, ceilidhs, talks, free events, late night sessions and workshops, the festival focuses on the roots of traditional Scottish music and also features international folk and world music artists. This years event will also feature Scotland’s links with the German composer Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770 – 1827). 

The festival event, Ludwig Mòr nan Òran – Gaelic Songs For Beethoven, is part of a Scottish-Austrian-German project exploring the composer’s links to Gaelic culture and Edinburgh-based music publisher and folk-song collector, George Thomson (1757–1851). Celtic Connections have arranged performances of the original Gaelic versions of ancient folk songs which Beethoven adapted, as well as the versions he produced for George Thomson. The Celtic Connections website gives the following details:

'Between 1809 and 1820, Beethoven wrote well over 100 piano trio arrangements of Scottish, Irish and Welsh folk songs, commissioned by Edinburgh collector and publisher George Thomson. Two centuries later, those Scottish-based compositions are reunited here with their Gaelic ancestry, in an exclusive preview of a German/Scottish/Austrian project planned for Beethoven's 250th anniversary in 2020. Featuring two Gaelic and two classical singers - Màiri MacInnes, Michael Klevenhaus, Lorna Anderson and Jamie MacDougall – together with pipers Allan MacDonald and Thomas Zöller, and TrioVanBeethoven, Vienna, the performance will shed fascinating new light on both Beethoven’s artistry, and the music that inspired him.'