by Connie Shakalis, for the Herald-Times, April 30, 2026, Updated May 1, 2026, 3:15 p.m. ET<\/p>\n\n\n\n
(link to article on the HT website)<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n As the music gushes May 16 at Indiana University\u2019s Musical Arts Center (MAC), the audience will feel Beethoven wrestling with his disappointments: a pitiless father, illnesses, spoiled romances and his well-publicized hearing loss. In his Ninth Symphony Beethoven seeks global elation. The third movement contains his sad memories evolving into acceptance. \u201cOde to Joy\u201d comes last and splashes exuberance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Beethoven\u2019s Ninth Symphony (Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125 ) is \u201cdedicated to all Mankind. Embracing all phases of human emotion … it is the final resume of all of Beethoven\u2019s achievements.\u201d (Frederick Stock, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra\u2018s second music director, in \u201cTalks About Beethoven\u2019s Symphonies\u201d from cso.org). <\/p>\n\n\n\n It is often called the \u201cgreatest of all symphonies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bloomington Symphony Orchestra\u2019s music director, Ryo Hasegawa, will conduct the program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Beethoven and women didn\u2019t mix well. His pretty mother, Anna Maria Magdalene, had once said<\/a> \u201cif you want my good advice, stay single, then you\u2019ll have the true, quietest, most lovely and pleasant life. … Then what is marriage, a little joy, but after that a chain of suffering, and she is still young.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n And of course, grave abdominal ailments tortured Beethoven for most of his life. By 1792, in Vienna, people \u2014 particularly generous aristocrats \u2014 were admiring him. His hearing noticeably decreased around 1797. By 1802 he seriously considered taking his life, as he noted in the Heiligenstadt Testament, a letter he wrote to his brothers. But music stopped him from doing so, he told them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Two years later Beethoven fell in love with one of his fortepiano students, Josephine Brunswick, a young widow. To marry him was to lose social standing for Brunswick. She cut off the love affair. According to his own account, Beethoven fell in love again in 1816. This ended sadly too. In 1821 he had a terrible case of jaundice. Until death, sickness chased him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Beethoven\u2019s Ninth Symphony is well known for its difficulty to sing. It contains ferocity, speed \u2014 and it\u2019s sung in German. Many choir directors tell their sopranos and tenors to sing a lower part or rove from one part to another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Skyward as Beethoven\u2019s notes may be for the piece\u2019s top voices, \u201csopranos like to sing high notes,\u201d said Carolyn Sowinski, a soprano and board officer with Bloomington Chamber Singers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Many call Beethoven\u2019s Ninth a masterpiece of Western classical music and one of history\u2019s most stupendous musical feats. The piece is his last symphony. It represents his life, starting as a little boy, of music, always music. (Rishab Jain, cadencecorner.org.) Beethoven composed the first symphony ever to use singing soloists and a chorus. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBeethoven\u2019s music is familiar, the way we all know a painting like (van Gogh\u2019s) \u2018Starry Night,\u2019\u201d said Mary Craig, a soprano who will be singing. \u201cBeethoven demands a lot of the chorus. We need to feel as powerful and versatile as instruments in the orchestra to achieve the sound.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The BSO hasn\u2019t performed Beethoven\u2019s Ninth before. Donna Lafferty, the symphony\u2019s executive director, has readied her trombone. Joining her and the other instrumentalists will be more than 100 members of local choruses. The evening will begin with a world premiere work by Chinese American composer and pianist Daixuan Ai. Ai wrote \u201cWhen It Blooms\u201d to coordinate with Beethoven’s Ninth in several ways. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhile it’s not as technically challenging as some of the pieces we’ve performed in the past–here I’m thinking of (Maurice) Ravel’s \u2018La valse\u2019 from eight or nine (BSO) seasons ago,\u201d staging Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony presents its own unique challenges,\u201d Lafferty said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Betsy Burleigh will prepare the chorus, which includes several singing organizations. Among those are the Bloomington Chamber Singers (Caio Guimar\u00e3es F. Lopes, artistic director), Voces Novae and the choir of the Unitarian Universalist Church (Sue Swaney, director of the last two). Additional local choirs will also sing. The soloists are Nathalie Friederich, Esther Jo, Suro Kim and Stephen Stavnicky.<\/p>\n\n\n\nDid Beethoven have it in for sopranos (and tenors)? Those high notes!<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Beethoven composed first symphony using vocal soloists, chorus<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
A first for BSO<\/h2>\n\n\n\n