It is the most famous of all the symphonies and documentation claims that even as a young man Beethoven aspired to translate Schiller's Ode to Joy into music. Written in 1823, it is precisely in his last complete symphonic work that he does so, more specifically in the final movement, where he confronts all the energetic-tragic side of the dramas of wars and the inherent worlds of unfathomable sadness, with the profound final joy, where everything is transfigured into strong expectation and hope. 

Hector Berlioz considered Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 to be the 'apex of its author's genius'. The intrinsic vigor of the work definitively promotes it as a mark of the most indelible attitude in symphonic production of all time. As someone once said, Beethoven thus expresses 'the will to freedom, the democratic yearning of the people'. 
 
Conductor Vítor de Matos 
Duration 90' 
Promoter University of Minho