Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony on Carnegie Hall+

Five Definitive Performances of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony

May 2024 marks the 200th anniversary of the premiere of Beethoven’s remarkable Ninth Symphony, featuring the beloved “Ode to Joy.” Carnegie Hall+ offers five definitive performances of the iconic symphony, ranging from a historic Christmas Day concert conducted by Leonard Bernstein at the Berlin Wall to a musical call for peace from Daniel Barenboim’s West-Eastern Divan Orchestra.

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Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 on Carnegie Hall+

Leonard Bernstein and the Vienna Philharmonic: Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony

Leonard Bernstein: Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in East Berlin 1989

Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with Daniel Barenboim and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra

Vocalists and orchestras performing on stage

Vienna Philharmonic: Beethoven’s Ninth A Bicentennial Performance conducted by Riccardo Muti

Riccardo Muti conducting the Vienna Philarmonic

Berlin Phil: Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony

Herbert von Karajan conducting the Berlin Philharmonic

Vienna Philharmonic with Leonard Bernstein

Leonard Bernstein and the Vienna Philharmonic’s cycle of Beethoven’s symphonies comes to a moving close with the Ninth, an affirmation of optimism, beauty, and universality written when Beethoven was almost completely deaf.

Leonard Bernstein at the Berlin Wall

Recorded in East Berlin on Christmas Day in 1989, this historic concert celebrates the Berlin Wall’s fall six weeks earlier. Bernstein leads an orchestra and soloists drawn from East and West Germany, the Soviet Union, US, UK, and France.

West-Eastern Divan Orchestra with Daniel Barenboim

Famous for its “Ode to Joy,” Beethoven's last symphony is a monumental work and an impassioned call for peace—especially poignant for the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, whose music-making leaps over national, ethnic, and religious borders. Recorded in 2012.

Vienna Philharmonic: Beethoven’s Ninth: A Bicentennial Performance conducted by Riccardo Muti

Two-hundred years to the day after the premiere, Riccardo Muti conducts an iconic work in the Vienna Philharmonic’s repertoire, with soprano Julia Kleiter, mezzo-soprano Marianne Crebassa, tenor Michael Spyres, and bass Günther Groissböck. Recorded in 2024.

Berliner Philharmoniker with Herbert von Karajan

Beethoven’s valedictory Symphony No. 9 is a choral-orchestral extravaganza, culminating in the uplifting “Ode to Joy” finale that has become the most frequently cited affirmation of human solidarity in music.