Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.’ If there is one work that can claim to illustrate these words of Beethoven’s, it is his own Ninth Symphony, with its renowned setting of Friedrich Schiller’s Ode to Joy. According to Friedrich Nietzsche, this work is so uplifting that ‘one feels one is floating among the stars above the earth, with the dream of immortality in one’s heart: all the stars around one seem to twinkle and the earth appears to sink ever further away.’ In this almost metaphysical work, Beethoven gave an impetus to the symphonic genre that resonated throughout the nineteenth century. Our Music Director, Alain Altinoglu, will conduct this masterpiece of symphonic music as the first concert in a complete cycle of the Beethoven symphonies, with the National Orchestra of Belgium, that will be concluded in the 2018–19 season.
