Completing the orchestra’s triumphal Golden Season is a symphonic and choral tour de force: an all-Beethoven program whose capstone is the Ninth, the apotheosis of Beethoven’s symphonies, if not all his music. Often called the “Symphony of Joy”, the moniker endures not just for the supremacy of the famous “Ode to Joy”, but for the sheer force of joy that infuses all the music from beginning to end. The ideas Beethoven would use in his monumental work were in formation for many years: melodies and parts that he would ultimately use in the Ninth date back to the gestative years before he wrote his First. Schiller’s poem “The Ode to Joy” interested Beethoven from 1793, when he sought to place it in song, but the musical theme of the last movement was written only a year before the completion of the symphony, showing that Beethoven composed the work over his entire life. Including a chorus with four soloists, the Ninth is the first symphony by a major composer to use the voice as an instrument. Written after Beethoven’s deafness was complete, it stands as a testament to the composer’s musical genius and is considered by many to be the greatest piece of music ever written.