Happy New Year from Konzerthaus Berlin
It‘s not surprising that Beethoven 9 has become this traditional New Year‘s piece: we‘re all particularly receptive to its message of global fraternity and sorority around the holidays.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
🎭 Vladimir Jurowski & RSB
🎶 Rasch & Beethoven
🏛️ Konzerthaus Berlin
🗓️ 30.12.2024
Ending the year on a high note at Konzerthaus Berlin with a piece that is as mandatory as it is traditional for the turn of the year: Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9. While I‘ve heard this piece in several versions (last, I believe, in Taipei and in Mandarin), I‘ve never quite heard it like this: conductor Vladimir Jurowski employed historical instruments like baroque trombones and chromatic horns to give Beethoven 9 a sound language meant to “invite the audience to question the piece and reflect on it”.
As a “cherry on top”, the concert was opened with the world debut of a short piece for orchestra by Torsten Rasch: “Pataphor”, which picks up the main motives and themes from Beethoven 9 but has them transposed, inverted, or assigns key passages to new instruments. Rasch was present in the audience—a cool experience to share the first public performance of a piece, ever, together with the composer (who has a very impressive vita, having had a decades-long career in Japan as a film soundtrack composer).
It‘s not surprising that Beethoven 9 has become this traditional New Year‘s piece. We‘re all particularly receptive to its message of global fraternity and sorority around the holidays. It‘s also a welcome reminder that even with the sometimes seemingly elitist patina of gilded halls like the Konzerthaus, classical music is (or should be) for everyone. Beethoven 9 has bridged social strata, with choirs of the early 20th-century workers movement claiming it and starting the tradition of performing it for the New Year in the first place. In light of recent budget cuts in Berlin, I imagine such concerts will become even less accessible than they already are—a bummer, and to the detriment of our increasingly fragile social consensus. Beethoven would be disappointed.
On a personal and lighter note, this year has been the fullest and most rewarding year of opera and classical music yet for me, with over 60 operas, philharmonic concerts, ballets, and other new exciting formats. To my tiny community of followers and friends: Happy New Year, and onwards and upwards to a bright 2025 full of music for everyone! 🎇🎶
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