FREEDOM OF THE WILL (2022, 57 minutes)
This rental is for unlimited viewing for three months

A film about music made by a musician.
No human being is perfect – an attempt to idealize a person will always land in half-truths. But music can inspire and empower, and no music has done so more than the music composed by Ludwig van Beethoven. This film takes us through historical moments and portraits of people who have been touched by the timeless power of Beethoven’s music. Beet- hoven’s music has been a part of my life since I played ”Fur Elise” when I was six years old. For the past twenty years, his music has been a constant part of my life in cycles of all the piano sonatas and piano concertos. I’ll never forget the letter I got after playing the dramatic ”Appassionata” in a concert.

In the audience was a man whose wife had recently passed away, and he obviously had a hard time recovering from that. He received a ticket to the concert as a gift from friends and he went to the concert, albeit reluctantly. After the recital, he wrote to me that when he had listened to Beethoven’s music, it made him want to come back to life, it gave him strength and hope in a way that nothing else had managed.

Although that story is not in the film, it could symbolize the heart of the film. How music, and in this case Beethoven’s music, can give us an inner strength that perhaps we didn’t know we had. I could make a film about research that shows how music affects the brain’s limbic system, the sys- tem that handles emotions and memories. But that’s not this movie.

I want to tell the story through music, and through people.