New year, new sounds: John Eliot Gardiner conducts two works in his New Year’s Eve programme that are geared towards a new beginning. bach’s double-choir motet calls for “Sing unto the Lord a new song” (not to be confused with the cantata of the same name, which Bach actually composed for New Year’s Day in 1724). Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 then turns away even more clearly from what has gone before: “O friends, not these tones!” it says, “but let us intone more pleasant and joyful ones”. Exactly the right message at a time when we would indeed like to hear more “pleasant” tones here and there. Those that adhere to the core sentence of Schiller’s “Ode to Joy”, which Beethoven used for this very first choral symphony in music history: “All men become brothers.”
(from Tonhalle Zürich)