Beethoven's Choral Symphony No 9 has withstood many storms since its chaotic opening night in 1824 when the orchestra was instructed to ignore the composer – by now completely deaf – as he conducted to a packed house.
The instant hit of the final movement, the Ode to Joy, has attracted all forms of debasement from a performance at Hitler's birthday to modern day ringtones.
It may even yet survive its use as the 'hymn' of the European Union, whose subjugating bu
reaucratic instincts and corrupted idealism seems at odds with Beethoven's mighty appeal to universal brotherhood.
The work shrugged off a mini-crisis – last night when the Reykjavik choir scheduled to join the Philharmonic Choir and Preston's own Cecilian Choir failed to show because of "sponsorship problems". A decibel deficit caused by not enough notes in Iceland maybe.
But it scarcely seemed to matter when one of the world's greatest, and most gracious, musicians, Vladimir Ashkenazy, was guest conductor.
In live performance the 9th Symphony is still a hard-to-subdue giant – goodness knows what that first-night audience really made of it beyond its veneration of the composer.
A revered pianist and now honoured conductor, Ashkenazy seemed to let the tumult have its own way in the first two shuddering movements and then found a absorbing path to the work's joyful conclusion. He even shook off a moment of farce – he was midway through the adagio when, oh horror, one of his braces popped off and appeared from under his coat.
Sublimity overcame the instinct to mirth and Ashkenazy, fluidly supported by his four vocal soloists, brilliantly showed how the work's indomitable optimism has endured above all else. His ovation was well earned.
Trevor Willis
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