Twenty Minutes - Beethoven's Double Bass

At the heart of Beethoven's Choral Symphony is the famous recitative dialogue between double bass and orchestra. It's a moment that lies at the heart of the double bass player's repertoire and, according to bassist Rodney Slatford, was inspired by perhaps the greatest bass player of them all, Domenico Dragonetti. With the help of Dragonetti's diaries and other memorabilia he has collected over the years, Rodney puts forward the case for putting a Dragonetti footnote into the story of the creation of Beethoven's masterpiece.