Performance Dates:
    Thursday, November 5, 2009 8:00pm
    Friday, November 6, 2009 1:30pm
    Saturday, November 7, 2009 8:00pm

Program	Audio
BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 8
BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 9

Change for Programs 3 & 4 of Beethoven, The Complete Symphonies
Lorin Maazel, one of the world's most respected conductors, will lead the Boston Symphony Orchestra in the final two programs of the orchestra's Beethoven's cycle, including the Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth symphonies, October 30-November 7, at Symphony Hall. Mr. Maazel will also lead the BSO in its upcoming Carnegie Hall program Beethoven's Sixth and Seventh symphonies, on November 2. Maestro Maazel steps in for BSO Music Director James Levine, whose doctors have advised him to postpone returning to his conducting schedule until he is more fully recovered from surgery that took place earlier this month for a herniated disc.

The fourth program in the BSO's historic Beethoven symphony cycle concludes with a program pairing the shortest of the nine, the wonderfully jovial Eighth (premiered in February 1814, and which the composer considered one of his finest symphonies), with his longest and most ambitious, No. 9 (one of the last pieces Beethoven wrote). Beethoven's use of chorus and soloists in the Ninth's final movement, a setting of Schiller's "Ode to Joy"—an unprecedentedly bold and imaginative stroke—remains startlingly effective today.

NEW! Ludwig Van Beethoven "The Complete Symphonies" Classical Companion

About the Music
The third program in the BSO's historic Beethoven symphony cycle pairs two of the composer's most beautiful and lyrical symphonies. The Symphony No. 6, Pastoral, is a programmatic work narrating a pleasant day spent in the country, with cuckoos, dancing peasants, and a thunderstorm. The Seventh Symphony, premiered at the end of 1813, has been an audience favorite ever since.

Lorin Maazel, conductor

Lorin Maazel recently completed his seventh and final season as Music Director of the New York Philharmonic. He continues, now in his fourth season, as the first Music Director of the Santiago Calatrava-designed opera house in Valencia, Spain, the Palau de les Arts “Reina Sofia,” and as the founder and Artistic Director of the Castleton Festival, launched to exceptional acclaim in 2009. 

Maestro Maazel has been music director of the Symphony Orchestra of the Bavarian Radio (1993 until summer 2002), music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony (1988–96); general manager and chief conductor of the Vienna State Opera (1982–84)—the first American to hold that position; music director of The Cleveland Orchestra (1972–82); and artistic director and chief conductor of the Deutsche Oper Berlin (1965–71). He is an Honorary Member of both the Israel Philharmonic and the Vienna Philharmonic, and is the recipient of the Hans von Bülow Silver Medal from the Berlin Philharmonic. His close association with the Vienna Philharmonic includes eleven internationally televised New Year’s Concerts from Vienna (often with Maestro Maazel making an added contribution to the festivities as violinist). He has conducted more than one hundred and fifty orchestras in no fewer than five thousand opera and concert performances. He has made over three hundred recordings, winning ten Grands Prix du Disques.

Maestro Maazel is also a highly regarded composer. His works include an opera, 1984, based on George Orwell’s literary masterpiece, a trilogy of concertos (for cello, flute and violin), a symphonic movement (“Farewells,” Op. 14), and several contributions to the repertoire of narrated texts with orchestra, including two children’s stories, “The Giving Tree” and “The Empty Pot.”

Alongside his prodigious performing activity, Maestro Maazel founded a major competition for young conductors in 2000. Through his Châteauville Foundation, in Castleton, Virginia, he has created a new festival and residency program for young artists, centered around fully staged productions of chamber operas.  Committed to environmental and humanitarian causes, he has raised millions of dollars for the benefit of such entities as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), World Wide Fund for Nature, the Red Cross, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).