THE Beethoven Project, which gets under way at Turner Sims tonight, will give audiences the chance to experience the composer in a more intimate and personally illuminating way

The internationally acclaimed artists Chloë Hanslip and Danny Driver present a landmark performances of Beethoven’s complete Sonatas for Piano and Violin. These ten works were instrumental in re-defining the landscape for the violin and piano repertoire and give audiences today the chance to hear Beethoven in a more intimate genre.

The concerts take place tomorrow, on May 4 and October 17 and will be the first complete cycle of this repertoire for the artists who will also be recording the concerts live for release over the next two years.

Most of the Sonatas for Piano and Violin were written early in Beethoven’s career and shine a light on an emerging composer yet to become the man so celebrated for his epic, large-scale symphonies. These pieces give audiences a chance to hear a different man from the one responsible for music such as the valiant Ode to Joy and his heroic Symphony No. 5.

The cycle leads the audience from the earliest Op. 12 Sonatas through the lyricism of the ‘Spring’ Sonata, culminating in October 2017 with the quasi-pastoral Op. 96 Sonata and the Op. 47 ‘Kreutzer’ – an epic work, which Beethoven himself deemed ‘almost in the style of a concerto’.

Violinist, Chloë Hanslip, said: ‘Performing Beethoven’s Piano and Violin Sonatas is one of the greatest joys for me as a musician – the way in which he shapes the conversation between both instruments is simply breath-taking. By performing and recording this complete cycle of the Sonatas Danny and I hope to show a different side of Beethoven from the Symphonies, Chamber and Piano works that we all know and love.

Box office: 023 8059 5151 or turnersims.co.uk