“Oh brothers, not these tones! Let’s strike the nicer, higher and more joyful ones…” – are the words added by Ludwig van Beethoven to Ode to Joy by Friedrich Schiller. They are the introduction to the lines of the poem used in the cantata which is the finale of The Ninth Symphony by the master from Bonn. Christoph Eschenbach, artistic director of the Wrocław Philharmonic, will respond to this classic call that has been resounding for over two hundred years, during the concert at the NFM.
The first sketches of the famous melody, which was used to set Schiller’s text to music and is now part of pop culture, predate the composition of The Ninth by thirty-five years. Since the Symphony had its premiere on May 7, 1824, due to the time when the work was written, it can be seen as a bridge between Classicism and Romanticism. Or as a look through the prism of the formal solutions used by Beethoven that question Classical patterns. It is worth mentioning not only the enormous size of the composition and the involvement of the singers in performing its fourth movement, but also the swapping of dance movements (scherzo) in the symphony's progress and the slow ones, the tighter integration of the melodic material within the whole and the extended codas.
Although it is hard to believe today, this groundbreaking masterpiece did not immediately find its way into the performing canon. It was included there only fifty years after its Viennese premiere, thanks to Richard Wagner. The performance of the work under his baton at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus in 1872 was a significant moment. “Beethoven's Ninth Symphony became the mystical object of all my fantastic musical thoughts and desires. I was first attracted to it by the opinion circulating among musicians, not only in Leipzig, that it was written by Beethoven when he was already half-mad. It was believed that when it comes to fantastic and incomprehensible undertakings, it was a non plus ultra, and this was enough to awaken in me an ardent desire to investigate this mysterious work,” recalled the author of Das Rheingold.