Tracing Beethoven in Zagreb

Beethoven’s Zagreb and Croatian acquaintances included his aristocratic friends, the two countesses, Ana Barbara Keglevich and Anne Marie Erdődy nee Niczky, whom he intented to visit in 1817 in her castle near Zagreb. His other friends, Nanette and J. A. Streicher, were ancestors of today’s Zagreb musicians, and general Greth, husband of Jeannette d’Honrath, played on a private concert there in 1819. Beethoven’s music was performed on the first concert of the Musikverein in Zagreb (today Croatian Music Institute, CMI) in 1827. A representative of the Musikverein was present at the Vienna centenary celebrations of his birth in 1870; interesting material about that is kept in the CMI, together with some early and first editions of Beethoven’s works. The local premiere of the Ninth Symphony took place in 1900, with more than 200 performers. Other notable performances of the work include that conducted by Lorin Maazel (1987), and the project entitled Nine for the Ninth Centenary (1994), which united young musicians in the wartime. Tracing Beethoven in Zagreb also concerns his name, which was written on the walls of the CMI building in 1876, and his impressive bust made in 1939 by Vanja Radaus, kept today in a clinic for otorhinolaryngology.