Budapest Festival Orchestra & Fischer

On the bicentenary of Beethoven's death, a season that extensively covers his work could not fail to present Symphony No. 9, "Choral", one of the most universal scores in music history. With this final symphony, Beethoven expanded the limits of the genre by incorporating the human voice and turned Schiller's Ode to Joy into a powerful proclamation of the ideals of freedom, equality and fraternity that he himself defended. His famous final melody, subsequently adopted as the European Hymn, has ended up transcending concert halls to become a symbol of understanding between peoples. A message that, two hundred years after the composer's death, fully connects with peace, the guiding thread of the Palau de la Música Catalana season. For a work of such magnitude, the Palau welcomes back Iván Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra, one of the great European orchestras and a formation very loved by the house's audience, after the numerous visits that the director and orchestra have headlined. To the voices of Eleanor Lyons, Olivia Vermeulen, Andrew Staples and Hanno Müller-Brachmann is added, for the occasion, The Pan-European Chorus, formed by singers from choirs of different European countries. The chorus's own composition thus adds a new dimension to the ideals of fraternity and union between peoples proclaimed by the Ninth and connects them directly with the motto of this season. A whole song to peace!