BSO — 2025/01/25

 The BSO's Beethoven and Romanticism" Festival brings his Eighth and Ninth Symphonies this evening. WCRB tells us a bit more:

Saturday, January 25th, 2025
8:00 PM

The Boston Symphony’s Beethoven cycle, led by Music Director Andris Nelsons, culminates with the playful Symphony No. 8 and the Symphony No. 9, featuring the Tanglewood Festival Chorus and a stellar cast of soloists in its iconic final movement, the “Ode to Joy.”

Andris Nelsons, conductor
Sara Jakubiak, soprano
Tamara Mumford, mezzo-soprano
David Butt Philip, tenor
Andrè Schuen, baritone
Tanglewood Festival Chorus
 James Burton, conductor

ALL-BEETHOVEN program
Symphony No. 8
Symphony No. 9

Learn more about the BSO's "Beethoven and Romanticism" festival.

For more about the symphonies and the performers go to the links on the BSO's performance detail page, which also gives this comment:

Boston Symphony Orchestra

Symphony Hall, Boston, MA 

Andris Nelsons, conductor
Sara Jakubiak, soprano
Tamara Mumford, mezzo-soprano
David Butt Philip, tenor 
Andrè Schuen, baritone
Tanglewood Festival Chorus,
 James Burton, conductor

ALL-BEETHOVEN program
Symphony No. 8
-Intermission-
Symphony No. 9

For all his reputation as a prickly artistic genius whose music crackles with heaven-storming power, Beethoven shared with his teacher Haydn a delightful musical wit, nowhere so clearly demonstrated as in his Eighth Symphony. The cycle concludes with his hugely ambitious and all-embracing Ninth, a revolution in and of itself; it was the first symphony to include chorus, transforming Friedrich Schiller’s “Ode to Joy” into a hymn for humanity.

The review in the Intelligencer is descriptive of the proceedings, with no apparent fault  to find. I don't find a review in the Globe.

I attended the Friday performance. Unlike the Intelligencer's reviewer, I didn't see the resemblance to Haydn in the 8th. I guess I was in a bad mood: most of the music struck me a "gruff Beethoven," which I don't much care for. The third movement of the 9th was lovely, and I liked the playing, especially the horns and the basses. The soloists sang their parts, and the chorus was powerful.

Well, I still like aymphonies 1, 2, 3, 5, & 6.   Despite my feelings, I definitely recommend listening. Maybe even I'll like it better this time around.