A product of his times....that seems like such a cliché way of telling a story – but, yes! A product of The Age of Enlightenment, Beethoven was all about some revolution. Through his free and fierce nature, he wrenched music out of the 18th century and into the next - Stravinsky would do the same thing a century later. What Beethoven did makes him if not the last of the Classicists then arguably the first of the Romantics. His adventures in disregarding 18th-century structure, requirements and protocol marked his music and his daily life, and in both areas he achieved a virtually complete freedom of expression. He was like Elvis Presley of the symphony...only he never wiggled his crotch on Ed Sullivan.