In an op-ed for Serenade magazine, Hao Huang, Bessie and Cecil Frankel Chair in Music and professor of music, explains why playing Beethoven’s music has mattered to him, especially during the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic. “Performing music for a live audience is a way to share the most special, innermost core of my being, the part that aspires to beauty so much that it dares to try to make it,” Huang says. “Music is an art form that I love because it reminds me of the possibilities in life—the best of what it could be. . . . We dare to journey beyond ourselves. And Beethoven’s music does that for me as well as any composer’s.” A video of Huang performing Beethoven’s “Sonata for Piano in E Major, Op .109,” is included in the article.