»All men become brothers«: the international line-up of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra is a very practical application of the ideal of peaceful understanding among nations expressed in music in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Together with the Arnold Schoenberg Choir from Vienna and four exceptional soloists, the orchestra now performs Beethoven’s opus magnum at the Elbphilharmonie, along with Schoenberg’s a cappella choral work »Peace on Earth«, which has its genesis in the same great notion. Matthias Pintscher conducts.

Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony embodies the utopic human dream of peaceful coexistence like no other piece in musical history. »All men become brothers«, so goes the famous finale of Beethoven’s setting to music of Friedrich Schiller’s »Ode to Joy«. That goal still appears unreachably distant today – all the more important, then, that Schiller and Beethoven’s vision is performed as an urgent reminder time and time again. read less