SAN MARCOS — The Palomar Symphony Orchestra, along with the Palomar Chorale and Chamber Singers, in partnership with the MiraCosta College Chamber Choir, will perform Beethoven’s “Symphony No. 9” over two evenings and one afternoon in the Howard Brubeck Theater.
This collaboration features around 150 performers on stage. The three groups will come together for three performances over the course of the week. The first performance will be at 7 p.m. on Thursday, May 21, followed by back-to-back weekend performances on Saturday, May 23 at 7 p.m. and on Sunday, May 24 at 2 p.m.
Composed in 1824, “Symphony No. 9” is Ludwig van Beethoven’s final symphony. The piece consists of four movements and ends with performances by four soloists and a chorus singing Friedrich Schiller’s poem “Ode to Joy.”
“The orchestra, the chorus, the soloists have all operated in different forms of classical music, but Beethoven was the first one to combine them in a symphony,” Director of Choral and Vocal Studies John Russell said. “That gave it a lot of prominence when it was first premiered, and has kept it as a really important example of a composer pushing boundaries, but then doing so in such an important and memorable way that the piece just never really went away.”
John Russell directs the vocalists and will also perform as a soloist while Ellen Weller directs the orchestra.
Weller describes the first movement as “stormy and combative,” the second movement as “a manic dance,” and the third movement as “heaven.”
The third movement features a conversation like exchange between the instrumental sections, starting with the basses and cellos.
“And [Beethoven] brings back little snippets of the previous three movements, and he’s like, ‘No, that’s not it.’ And finally the cellos say, ‘What about this?’ And the basses are, ‘Yes, that’s the right thing. Yep.” and then all of that happens again, but this time it’s a bass singer who says, ‘No, not those sounds. Those are ugly. We want something beautiful.’ And then the ‘Ode to Joy’ theme comes in,” Weller said.
The over 70 minute long symphony will have over 100 musicians working in unison, including 80 vocalists, making endurance an important factor.
“There really is strength in numbers when you’re singing the ninth symphony,” Russell said. “Beethoven was not very kind to sopranos and tenors, and there are some very high passages that are much more comfortable to sing relatively when you have 20 sopranos instead of six or eight.”
Not only do the vocalists have to keep up with other voices, they also have to sing in German.
“For many singers, the language — singing in German — is a new challenge that many of them have embraced, but that takes a lot of coaching and patience and repetition to really become comfortable with,” Russell said.
The performance was originally scheduled for 2020 to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the symphony’s composition, but it was postponed due to the pandemic. Despite the delay, Weller emphasized how important the performance is now more than ever.
“We need it right now. We need to feel some joy. We need to, you know, put down our own needs, and really band together, because there’s a lot at risk right now,” Weller said.
Community is what makes this particular performance different from other renditions of “Symphony No. 9,” according to Weller.
“This is us on stage. These are our students, our colleagues. Some of us are our mothers and our children, you know, and our best friends. They’re on stage, taking great risk to bring this art,” Weller said.
Delta Jordan, a violinist in the orchestra, said everyone should listen to the symphony live since listening to the recording doesn’t compare. She also said she believes that with the rise of Artifcial Intelligence (AI) in music, it’s important to experience live music.
“It’s only going to become harder and harder to discern and know what is actually human connection versus something that’s fake and not from a human,” Jordan said. “So I think more and more it’s important to go to live performances of music, of all kinds of music, whatever music you love. I think it’s really, really important to go and support that.”
The first performance of Beethoven’s “Symphony No. 9” will take place at 7 p.m. on May 21 in the Howard Brubeck Theater.
For more information and tickets, visit the Palomar Performing Arts website.