Delight in small things: the Telekom Beethoven Competition winner, Seth Schultheis in recital at Hatfield House Music Festival

Seth Schultheis [Photo: Norbert Ittermann]

Beethoven, Elizabeth Ogonek, Schumann; Seth Schultheis; Hatfield House Music Festival in the Marble Hall
Reviewed 9 October 2026

The 2025 Telekom Beethoven Competition Winner in an engagingly varied programme that found delight in a sequence of short movements by three very different composers

Hatfield House Music Festival's second day, 9 October 2026, began with a piano recital by Seth Schultheis. An American based in London, Schultheis is currently an Aud Jebson Fellow at the Royal Academy of Music, and he won First Prize (and Special Prize for Chamber Music) at the 2025 Telekom Beethoven Competition in Bonn.

He began with Beethoven, not a sonata but the 11 Bagatelles, Op. 119. These were followed by five preluddes by contemporary American composer Elizabeth Ogonek, and Schumann's Davidsbündlertänze, Op. 6 concluded the evening. 

Beethoven evidently referred to his bagatelles as 'cobbler's patches'. They are short, characteristic pieces where Beethoven is relatively unfettered by the constraints of form. Schulteheis began with classical poise in the opening minuet and trio, but then the music soon moved between quirky and characterful before classical balance returned. The robust vigour of a dance was followed by intricate rhythms, fleeting moments and the distinctly quirky. A further classical piece had a sense of questioning in the harmony leading to a showy dance with hints of Weber, then a helter-skelter dash to the touching conclusion.

Schultheis perhaps did not make us think these were free improvisations; not so much Beethoven at the piano as the the considered products of the composer's imagination. But Schultheis's sensitivity to the music's quicksilver changes and sly endings was impressive.

Elizabeth Ogonek studied at Indiana University and the USC Thornton School of Music, before studying with Julian Anderson at Guildhall School on a Marshall Scholarship. Her Preludes date from 2024 and we heard five. All were notable for their highly wrought, intricate textures and complex harmonies. The first seemed flowing yet with a restlessness that carried over into the second prelude where the mobiel harmonies hinted at dark corners. The third seemed slow and uncompromising but this was modified by delicate elaborations. The fourth was simply a delicate web of sound whilst the short fifth had an exotic, quasi-Oriental feel with transparent elaborations.

Schumann wrote his Davidsbündlertänze in 1837, three years before he and his beloved Clara achieved wedded bliss. The work is free-format, Schumann writing 18 short movements reimagining the brotherhood of the Biblical King David as a fighting against Philistines who are the enemies of Art. We begin with Clara, however, a short burst of a mazurka before launching into music that combined style and character then movement to tender yearning. All the changeability of Schumann's possibly bi-polar nature is here, famously in the characters of Florestan and Eusebius.

Schultheis was beautifully alert to the changeable nature of the music by turns vigorous then tender, alert to meood changes, yet all with strength in his fingers. There were moments that were deceptively simple yet contrasted with impetuosity and urgency; skittishly impetuous yet with underlying strengh or strong rhythms. Towards the end a tender flowing movement with disinctly quirky corners led to a vigorous dance. We ended, however, with a simple tender dance that wound right down.

In many ways Schultheis's programme was daring. In something over an hour we heard some 34 short movements, three composers allowing their imaginations to flow. on stage, Schultheis had a somewhat unassuming characters, yet his fingers were strong, alert to mood and sympathetic to the most tender passage. 

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