About This Event

The BSO and Andris Nelsons' survey of the nine Beethoven symphonies comes to an uplifting conclusion with the last two, their period of composition separated by twelve years. Written just after the Seventh, the Eighth Symphony is Beethoven's shortest and arguably the wittiest and jolliest of his orchestral works. The Ninth Symphony still startles with its radical departures from symphonic tradition—most strikingly the inclusion of a chorus for the symphony's final movement, a setting of the Friedrich Schillers poem "Ode to Joy."