
Beethoven’s Ninth - bicentenary performance
Sun 23 Mar 2025, 7:00pm - 10:00pm
Barbican Hall, Barbican Centre, London
Sun 23 Mar 2025, 7:00pm - 10:00pm
Barbican Hall, Barbican Centre, London
200 years ago, the founders of the Royal Philharmonic Society gave the UK premiere of a new work they had commissioned: a work that would go on to resound worldwide, and represent the best of humanity.
The work was Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, and it’s thanks to a community of music-lovers here in the UK that Beethoven found the means to write it. His thanks to them is recorded in his own hand on the manuscript score in the British Library.
200 years on, we are proud to celebrate that extraordinary gesture, as a reminder of the huge positive impact that music can have in the world, and the opportunity we can collectively play in making that happen.
We are delighted that RPS Gold Medal recipient Antonio Pappano and the London Symphony Orchestra will give a special bicentenary performance of this enduring work, in a concert also set to feature Tippett’s joyous A Child of Our Time.