COSMOS Project

– Beethoven and India –
A spiritual relationship between great musical cultures

Shani Diluka, piano
in concert
with Sahana Banerjee, sitar and Prabhu Edouard, tablas

Thursday, 1^st November 2018, 6:30pm
M.L. Bhartia Auditorium, Alliance Française de Delhi

Concept note: There is a genuine historical link between Beethoven and Indian culture: in search of the depth of this culture and fascinated by the translation of mystical Indian texts (the Upanishad), which was released in 1816 in Germany, Beethoven immersed himself in these texts and even wrote a Brahmanic Indian poem in his notebooks to put it to music! This relationship has never been explored in concert or recording. That is why we want to pay tribute to Beethoven with this “Cosmos” project.
The sound spectrum imagined by Beethoven with his five-pedal pianos at that time and his long resonances found in sonatas or string quartets seem to call and shimmer the spectrum and resonance of the Sitar.

Very mystical in his search for the link between Man and Cosmos and curious about other cultures, some researches, notably by J.S. Shedlock, prove Beethoven’s interest in Indian culture. Some extracts of documents written by Beethoven are thus reproduced in Beethoven’s Letters with explanatory notes by Dr. A.C. Kalischer (translation by J.S. Shedlock), 1926.