Master work: Copying Beethoven was a challenge for Ed Harris

Who's afraid of Ludwig van Beethoven? Well, Ed Harris was, just a bit.

In almost three decades of moviemaking, the blue-eyed character actor has played artists ("Pollock") and writers ("The Hours," "Winter Passing"), good guys ("Apollo 13") and bad guys ("A History of Violence"), God-figures ("The Truman Show") and wheeler-dealers ("Glengarry Glen Ross"), all infused with his own brand of flinty intelligence. He's received innumerable honors, including four Academy Award nominations. But he wasn't quite sure he was ready to play the formidable 19th-century composer.

"I just found it to be a daunting challenge," said Harris, in an interview at the Toronto International Film Festival in September. In "Copying Beethoven," Harris plays the composer in the days leading up to the premiere of the Ninth Symphony, in 1824 Vienna. Agnieszka Holland ("Europa, Europa") directed the film, which opens in Seattle Friday at the Metro and Meridian.

Harris received the script from Holland, with whom he had worked twice before (in "The Third Miracle" and "To Kill a Priest"), in 2004. "I was a little surprised that she thought I could do this," Harris remembered. "I read it and I said ... 'I don't know how in the hell we'll pull it off, but sure.' " Laughing, he added, "I called a piano teacher that day."

Though he could read music, Harris felt overwhelmed by the technical challenges of the role, in which he would be depicted conducting a full orchestra in the Ninth Symphony. He began working closely with a conductor who helped him by "breaking down the segments that we knew we were going to work on, trying to understand, listening over and over again."

Meanwhile, he studied Beethoven's life. "I read pretty much whatever I could get my hands on," he said. "There are a number of his letters, books and several volumes of correspondence. A lot of business correspondence, about monies and copying and rights and where things are going to be played when. And he had some friends he corresponded with on a regular basis, a number of them."

From this, he found an entry point for his portrayal, which is bombastic yet witty. "He's a character. Irascible, eccentric guy," Harris said. "Even in his letters, there's some humor. If he's upset with somebody, he can be rather sardonic." (The actor's voice, off-screen, retains traces of his New Jersey upbringing — "youmer" for "humor." In person, he's soft-spoken and thoughtful, urging me to "take your time" when a publicist tries to hurry things to a close.)

He also spent time talking to co-screenwriter/producer Stephen J. Rivele, for whom the project was the end result of a lifelong obsession with Beethoven. The film's story blends fact with fiction, and features an invented character named Anna (played by Diane Kruger), a young composer who becomes Beethoven's copyist and, eventually, his muse.

"I asked [Rivele] point-blank," said Harris. "I said, 'Beethoven had a pretty interesting life, just historically, why are you introducing this other character?' He said, 'I had to think of a way for him to express himself about what he was doing, and what he was thinking about, what music meant to him, etc. I had to give him a voice, and I felt this was a device that could work.' "

A highlight of filming "Copying Beethoven" for Harris was four days spent in the historic Katona József Theater in Kecskemét, Hungary, where they rehearsed and performed the premiere of the Ninth Symphony, along with the Kecskemét Symphony Orchestra and the 60-member Chorus of Kecskemét. Harris explained that the orchestra was playing along to a Decca Records recording, so that the tempos would be consistent during editing.

Nonetheless, Harris said, conducting the orchestra was a kick. "I worked with them a couple of times without any recording," he said. "When we were rehearsing that one segment of the Ninth where Beethoven gets carried away and they can't keep up with him, that's actually a recording of them playing and me conducting.

"At one time, they cut the recording, and it was the last movement, and I kept conducting and they kept playing, and the choir came in and we kept going to the end of the piece. It was really fun; everyone was like 'oh, yeah!' because we finally got to do it on our own."

Looking back on the initially daunting task of playing Beethoven, Harris says he's proud of his work. "Regardless of what people think of the film, the experience of making it and the work that went into it on my behalf and what I learned doing it, not just about music but about myself as an actor, it was very fulfilling," he said.

"I said to myself [before making the film], if I can pull this off, then I feel like I can do anything. And I feel like I pulled it off."

Moira Macdonald: mmacdonald@seattletimes.com