OF BAGATELLES
AND WEIGHTIER MATTERS

JULIAN JACOBSON reports on the
Beethoven Piano Society of Europe's
Beethoven Senior Intercollegiate Piano Competition

When I was a child my Bagatelle looked very much like this fine specimen (below), which is still available to buy for the nostalgic or curious. Today, when even pinball machines carry a sad, old-fashioned air, one wonders if anyone under thirty knows what a bagatelle is. Certainly of the eight young pianists who participated in the annual Beethoven Piano Society of Europe's Beethoven Senior Intercollegiate Piano Competition, held at the Austrian Cultural Forum on Sunday 27 November 2011, for which the E flat Bagatelle Op 33 No 1 was the compulsory work, not more than a couple seemed to know that the title might indicate a game, or a 'trifle' in its more general dictionary definition. Most of them missed its wit and not-so-innocent charm, responding with something either too serious and weighty or alternatively too sweet and bland...