Audio: Brett Mitchell on Billy Joel and Beethoven

Beethoven’s Pathétique Sonata forms the chorus of Billy Joel’s “This Night”. (Graphic: Classic FM)

DENVER — Brett Mitchell has shared a reminiscence about Billy Joel and Beethoven with Colorado Public Radio as part of CPR Classical’s Beethoven 250 series:

When Brett Mitchell, Music Director of the Colorado Symphony, was a teenager, he watched the 1990s Beethoven biopic “Immortal Beloved” in the living room of his home in Seattle.

“And I asked my mother, ‘Why are they playing a Billy Joel song in the middle of a Beethoven movie?’” Mitchell recalls.

He was a Billy Joel fan as a teenager. He still is, he says.

That Beethoven “tune” in the movie was the Pathétique Sonata. To Mitchell, it sounded just like Joel’s song “This Night”. In fact, Joel credits “L.v. Beethoven” as co-writer of the song on his 1983 album An Innocent Man.

Read Why Beethoven Is Credited In This Billy Joel Song From ‘An Innocent Man’ at CPR Classical, and hear Mr. Mitchell’s full reminiscence below: