Beethoven: Symphony No. 9 (“Choral”)
Toni Marie Palmertree, soprano
Nian Wang, mezzo-soprano
Michael Jankosky, tenor
Brad Walker, bass-baritone
Beethoven’s profound genius, wizardry of imagination, and
vice-like grip of sonata-based formal procedures thrust him,
even during his lifetime, to the pinnacle of international
celebrity. Widely acknowledged as the successor to Mozart, he
set the ground rules for the nascent Romantic movement in
music. No composer has more greatly affected his age nor more
profoundly disturbed and challenged his followers. Beethoven’s
sad personal life and tragic physiological decline epitomize
Romantic heroism …”
D. Kern HolomanFrom "Evenings with the Orchestra" (W. W. Norton, 1992)
Beethoven returned to symphonic composition after a decade of
intellectual crisis and challenge ending in the creative outburst
of 1822–23 that produced the Diabelli Variations and the
Missa solemnis as well as the Ninth. The hiatus meant
that he would need to reconcile the evolution of his
compositional technique with the certain public expectation of
yet another in what had been a series of triumphs. In the years
since the Eighth Symphony he had achieved a new lyricism and
simplicity, even a certain intimacy of discourse.
Orchestral ConductingPh.D., Composition, State University of New York at BuffaloM.A., Conducting, Pennsylvania State UniversityB.A., Conducting and Composition, Catholic University of Argentina
