Deryk Barker wrote:

>Well that's your right Kar, but isn't there a danger of snobbishness
>here?  Isn't the Ninth (I'm assuming we're referring to Beethoven) a great
>masterpiece? Isn't it reasonable that it should be part of the standard
>repertoire? Isn't it reasonable that your orchestra's audience not be
>denied the opportunity of hearing it in the flesh?

Exactly, Deryk.  Somehow I think Beethoven wrote enough in this piece
that we can gain by hearing more than one, live performance of it.

I know that in the many times our SF Symphony Chorus had to do it in the
first year I was there (7 performances) we had to sit motionless on stage
for the first 3 movements and yet all of them and especially that beautiful
Adagio molto e cantabile were worth it every time.

When Bernstein and the NYPO came here (long ago, of course) to play a
concert, they played the Beethoven 5th Symphony (and the Stravinsky
Firebird music) and I was riveted by the Beethoven because it did not
sound anything like the Beethoven on my stereo speakers.

Live, it was just a miracle to me.  The 'over-familiar' became unfamiliar
and pretty darn thrilling.  I was in standing room and wondered why it was
so infrequent that I had ever had a chance to hear this played live.  Maybe
it was because people feel it's overplayed, but it was the first time I'd
had a chance to hear it in the way one should hear a symphony orchestra
(live).  What a piece.  Even the opening notes, which had almost become
a bit of a joke, were startling.

It was a very intense performance and I truly felt as if I had never really
heard the piece before, though I had a good recording of it and had played
it often enough to know it pretty well, or so I thought.

- A  (who did get tired of doing the 9th Far more than once every
            3 years when with the chorus)