Hear Ludwig Beethoven’s “Ninth Symphony” like you never heard it before on Sunday, February 26, when renowned conductor Benjamin Zander leads the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra at Carnegie Hall in a revelatory version of one of the most influential pieces of music ever written.
One of the world’s foremost interpreters of Beethoven and Mahler, Zander has spent nearly half a century researching and consumed by this monumental work and has finally fulfilled his quest to give the world the version that, by all written indications, Beethoven appears to have intended and heard in his mind. The multi-Grammy nominated conductor has reached the apotheosis of his own thinking, one that reflects Beethoven’s explicit tempo markings and indications of pace. “I can be free to approach the music, as I imagine Beethoven would have done himself playing it on the piano, with unfettered abandon,” he says.
The maestro, whose TED Talk on the transformative power of classical music is now the most watched TED lecture on music with a combined 21 million views on TED’s platforms, recorded the Ninth in 2018 with the Philharmonia Orchestra in London. The Sunday Times of London said it “heaps revelation on revelation.” Zander promises this concert will move the needle yet again as “a newly liberated interpretation.”
The maestro first presented his idea of the Ninth in Carnegie Hall with the Boston Philharmonic and the Chorus Pro Musical in 1983. The chief critic of The New Yorker Magazine, Andrew Porter, wrote: “If Mr. Zander is right, we have been listening to the music of the greatest composer only in misrepresentation”.
Forty years later Zander is bringing the same forces, plus four renowned soloists, to Carnegie Hall to share a new way of experiencing the Ninth. Soloists will include Tenor Nicholas Phan, Baritone Alfred Walker, Soprano Liv Redpath, Chorus Pro Musica, and Marsh Chapel Choir.
Pre concert, Maestro Zander will give a discussion on “Beethoven’s Ninth”, at 1:30pm. The performance is at 3pm.
For tickets, visit carnegiehall.org