Hero worship

It wasn’t meant to be like this. With worldwide celebrations champing at the bit, 2020 was going to be Beethoven’s year… until a pandemic came along to rain on the anniversary parade. But it doesn’t always take a significant birthday to provide the excuse to throw a party. Back in 1902, a group of artists in the composer’s adopted city planned a homage like no other: an ambitious fusion of art and design, sculpture and architecture, probing the notion of the composer’s role – and that of any artist – as a moral force. True, the Ninth Symphony was a catalyst, even briefly (if enduringly) implicating Gustav Mahler, but the ‘Beethoven Exhibition’ of the Vienna Secession was destined to cause a scandal. And to the scandal-loving Viennese – many thousands of whom had turned out to Beethoven’s