Tonight we attended a working rehearsal of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Tanglewood Festival Chorus performing my all-time favorite, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9. Despite having listened to the Ninth Symphony at least 500 times, I’ve somehow managed to never actually see a live performance of it, owing to schedule conflicts, sold-out performances, and one luckless trip to Tanglewood foiled by killer traffic on the Mass Pike on a steamy hot Sunday in August several years ago. Freude! Freude!
So I was excited, but a tad chargined that we were going to a rehearsal rather than the formal performance. But, you know what? The Ninth Symphony is the Ninth Symphony. Its power cannot be blunted by uncombed hair and street clothes. The chorus may look like a bunch of sad sacks, fresh from the toil and monotony of their day jobs, but the sounds that emanated from their throats is the universal anthem of joy, and I got shivers. Freude! Freude!
Tanglewood Festival Chorus
