Fra Noi Embrace Your Inner Italian
Maestro Riccardo Muti and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s 2014 performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 is available for free on-demand video streaming at cso.org/Beethoven9.
The performance — recorded at Orchestra Hall in Chicago on September 18, 2014 — opened the CSO’s 2014/15 season. It featured Riccardo Muti and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony Chorus, prepared by Chorus Director Duain Wolfe, and vocal soloists soprano Camilla Nylund, mezzo-soprano Ekaterina Gubanova, tenor Matthew Polenzani, and bass-baritone Eric Owens.
Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is recognized today as one of the pivotal works in the history of music by virtue of its humanistic message, its vast scale and organic unity of design and its groundbreaking “Ode to Joy” finale.
“Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is such a sublime work that I only dared to conduct it for the first time after being on the podium for almost 20 years,” remarked CSO Music Director Riccardo Muti. “To try to understand what is behind this sometimes metaphysical language is not easy, but we realize in the end that the message is universal.”
