2020 in classical music: when Covid rained on Beethoven's birthday parade The composer's 250th anniversary was a somewhat muted affair. But musicians – and more cautiously, institutions – refused to be silenced 13 December 2020 • 2:00pm Celebrations for Beethoven's 250th anniversary were muted by the pandemic Credit: Heritage Images The theme of classical music this year was meant to be triumph over adversity, as personified in the figure of Ludwig van Beethoven. The world’s concert halls had planned to spend the 250th anniversary of his birth staging Beethoven symphonies, sonatas, songs, trios and quartets. It was not to be. On March 15, at London’s Southbank Centre, the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen recreated the four-hour concert of 1808 when Beethoven conducted no fewer than three new works and numerous others. It was magnificent and inspiring in its mad ambition. The next day, everything stopped.