Composers Datebook

On today's date in 1803, violinist George Polgreen Bridgetower, age 33, and pianist and composer Ludwig van Beethoven, age 32, gave the first performance in Vienna of a new Sonata in A Major for Violin and Piano, a chamber work now regarded as one of Beethoven's greatest. The performance was to have taken place two days earlier, but Beethoven wasn't finished with the music. At the first rehearsal, Bridgetower had to read from Beethoven's manuscript score—no easy task considering Beethoven's poor penmanship—and at one point felt compelled to improvise a passage, which so enchanted Beethoven that he added Bridgetower's improvisation to his score. In fact, the two young men became fast friends, and were inseparable for a time. Bridgetower was an English violin virtuoso born in Poland of a European mother and an African father. He ended up in England, and joined the famous Salomon orchestra which premiered many of Haydn's "London" Symphonies. They caught the eye and ear of the Prince of Wales, who became his patron and sponsored a European tour which brought him to Vienna. His Viennese friendship with Beethoven came to a sudden end, Bridgetower later claimed, when the two men became interested in the same young lady. And so, even though it should be known as the "Bridgetower Sonata," when this music was published as Beethoven's Op. 47, Beethoven dedicated the music to another contemporary virtuoso, a French violinist named Kreutzer, who apparently never performed it.