A Simulcast Concert For The People Of Ukraine… Just Ended: Beethoven’s Immortal Beloved Ninth

We understand that over 100 FM classical radio stations simultcast recordings of this “immortal, beloved” work.

We listened in, as we finished some drafting. [And it all stands in stark contrast to the guy besmirching our masthead.] Below is the version WFMT | Chicago, our home station, played — from a Riccardo Muti CSO recording of a few years past. [We were in the audience that very night, as it happens.]

A number of conductors have made alterations in the instrumentation of the symphony. Notably, Richard Wagner doubled many woodwind passages, a modification greatly extended by Gustav Mahler, who revised the orchestration of the Ninth to make it sound like what he believed Beethoven would have wanted if given a modern orchestra. Wagner’s Dresden performance of 1864 was the first to place the chorus and the solo singers behind the orchestra as has since become standard; previous conductors placed them between the orchestra and the audience… but with the magic of stereo radio or more recently streaming, that is no longer needed.

Do give a listen — and meditate as you do, both on the proud, defiant tones of his soaring anthem, and the clear plaintive call for… peace, in Ukraine — the right to self determine:

Onward, now with an immortals’ spring in my afternoon step. Grin….

नमस्ते