Symfonie nr. 9

The concert

As part of the bicentenary of Beethoven's death, Giampaolo Bisanti guides the Choir and Orchestra through Symphony No. 9, a legendary work that has become a European anthem, symbolising the composer's ideal of brotherhood.

During the premiere of this final symphony in May 1824 in Vienna, Beethoven conducts from a chair. The conducting is entrusted to Michael Umlauf, who asks the artists to ignore the gestures of the composer, now completely deaf. At the end of the work, Beethoven remains with his back to the audience, unaware of the ovations. It is the contralto Caroline Unger who turns him around to reveal an absolute triumph.

This symphony pushes all the boundaries of the genre. Monumental in its duration and scale, it unfolds a bold architecture across four movements of unprecedented dramatic intensity. Beethoven lays the foundations of musical romanticism and opens horizons that Mahler, Bruckner, and many others will explore after him.

If the Ninth is sometimes called "Ode to Joy", it is because its fourth and final movement sets to music Schiller's poem, theOde to Joy. For the first time in the history of the symphony, soloists and choir join the orchestra, an innovation that foreshadows Mahler's great vocal symphonies. After three purely instrumental movements of extraordinary strength, human voices emerge to proclaim the ideal of universal brotherhood.

This poem is central to Beethoven's life. It outlines several musical settings before incorporating it into the Ninth, twenty years after its first reading. The very theme of the Anthem can be found in fragments in earlier compositions, including the Choral Fantasy. In 1985, the Council of Europe adopted it as the official anthem of the European Union.

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