One of my favorite holiday musical traditions is the New Year’s Eve performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. This is a fixture on the cultural calendar of many cities in Central Europe, but rarely seen and heard in this country.
Thanks to the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and its “One City One Symphony” initiative, a recording from the orchestra’s November concerts of the Beethoven Ninth, conducted by its music director designate, Louis Langrée, is available as a free download, here:
http://cincinnatisymphony.org/Content.php?id=29
A nice opportunity to try the Ninth at New Year at home, and a chance to hear one of the leading U.S. orchestras with its next generation of artistic leadership.