Hebrides Ensemble: Beethoven / Goya

Hebrides Ensemble are playing at the Schwarzman Centre on Wednesday 3 March, with a programme they've titled Beethoven / Goya. It's a joint production between the ensemble and the centre, so it's one of the projects they've developed specifically for the venue rather than a touring show that's just passing through.

The evening brings together three things at once: music by Beethoven, projections of Francisco Goya's paintings, and spoken word. It's not just a concert, then — the music runs alongside the images and the narration, so you're hearing the music while you're looking at the paintings and listening to the spoken part. It's a bit of a cross-disciplinary thing, and the title gives it away: Beethoven on the music side, Goya on the visual side.

It's part of the second season at the Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities, which runs from January to July 2027 and brings together international musicians, artists, choreographers and filmmakers. A good number of the projects in this season are commissioned and developed with Oxford University researchers, looking at the links between the arts, science, technology, the environment and human wellbeing. The centre itself opened to the public in April 2026 and houses seven of the university's humanities faculties alongside the Bodleian Humanities Library, with performance, screening and exhibition spaces built in.

Beethoven / Goya takes place in the Sohmen Concert Hall, inside the Schwarzman Centre on Woodstock Road in the Radcliffe Observatory Quarter. The ensemble is the Hebrides Ensemble, and the programme is Beethoven's music paired with Goya's paintings and spoken word, all coming together on the same night.