Beethoven's Eroica Symphony is about to be played. The concert hall is packed, and an expectant hush has settled over the audience. The conductor raises his baton, checks the violins, the oboes, the French horns. The orchestra is ready. Then, suddenly, his baton cuts the air, and the force, the clear magic power of Beethoven rushes forth to envelope the audience.

Beethoven composed his beautiful music in Vienna, well over a hundred years ago. Born in the city of Bonn on the shores of the German Rhine, young Ludwig, short and swarthy, failed to triumph at his concert debut in Cologne, and it was to take years of heartbreaking work before he would know success.

At last when success did come to him in Vienna, Beethoven poured all his love of freedom, his faith in man, his joy of nature into his work. He wrote concertos, symphonies, his opera Fidelio.

Then, at the peak of success and acclaim, deafness struck. Yet Beethoven's trust in himself, his belief that man must help himself, led him, in a world of silence, to write even greater works, and at last the Ninth, his greatest, his final symphony.

From the dust jacket