Also: “The Culture Week” – on May 12th from 9:05 a.m. on ORF 2
Vienna (OTS) – One of the key works of European classical music, Ludwig van Beethoven’s famous 9th Symphony, celebrated its 200th birthday yesterday, May 7th: its premiere in 1824 took place in the now defunct Vienna Kärntnertortheater. On the occasion of the anniversary, the “matinee” on Sunday, May 12th, 2024, at 9:05 a.m. on ORF 2 will bring a dacapo of the documentary “Beethoven’s Ninth and the Kärntnertortheater – A Musical Thriller” by Barbara Weissenbeck, which was already shown on May 9th only conducts detective research into the original location and resurrects it digitally, but also illuminates the history of the creation of Beethoven’s masterpiece and offers an “original listening impression”. Then it’s about “Ten Screws and an Idea – The Thonet Principle” (10 a.m.) – a film by Rudolf Klingohr about the famous traditional Austrian company that revolutionized design and furniture production in the 19th century.
The ORF cultural morning presented by Peter Schneeberger ends with “The Culture Week” (10.45 a.m.) with reports and tips on current cultural events.
“Beethoven’s Ninth and the Kärntnertortheater – A musical crime thriller” (9:05 a.m.)
On the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the premiere of Ludwig van Beethoven’s now world-famous 9th Symphony in Vienna’s Kärntnertortheater, the documentary by director Barbara Weissenbeck takes a journey back in time into the exciting past of this former cultural institution. The film sets out on a detective search for the historical plans and allows the stage house, where the equally world-famous Hotel Sacher now stands, to be “resurrected” thanks to breathtaking digital 3D reconstructions. Also shown is the adventurous creation process of Beethoven’s work, which is very well documented using the composer’s conversation notebooks and provides the musical framework for the documentation. At the end of the film, the last choral passages of the fourth movement with the famous “Ode to Joy”, which served as the inspiration for today’s European anthem, are played by the original sound orchestra of the Vienna Academy on the stage of the digitally “rebuilt” Kärntnertortheater.
The touching, sometimes tragic, multi-year history of the creation and premiere of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony is told from a musical perspective by, among others, music historian Birgit Lodes, Johannes Prominczel (archive management of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde Vienna) and conductor Martin Haselböck. The Berlin electro-acoustician Stefan Weinzierl and the Viennese architect Bernhard Rapf and his team were entrusted with the almost futuristic reconstruction of the historic Kärntnertortheater from 1824, which ultimately had to give way to the Ringstrasse construction in the middle of the 19th century.
“Ten screws and one idea – The Thonet principle” (10:00 a.m.)
Why do simple ideas trigger revolutions? And what soil do they have to fall on for the seeds to sprout? The documentary by Rudolf Klingohr explores the success story of the famous bentwood furniture from Thonet, which left its lasting mark on the Vienna Ringstrasse era and coffee house culture. Without “Armchair No. 14,” which sold more than 50 million copies worldwide by 1930 alone, many Viennese coffee houses would have looked different. The revolutionary seating furniture established the legendary reputation of the manufacturer Thonet. With the unique bentwood technique, the cabinetmaker Michael Thonet found the way to a new, simple aesthetic of sitting that could be mass-produced cost-effectively in his Viennese workshop. To this day, the furniture is a sought-after collector’s item and is considered typical artifacts of the Viennese 19th century.
With its production and sales method, Thonet is also considered a pioneer of industrial design: Packed in a transport box just one cubic meter in size, 36 disassembled chairs, each consisting of 6 parts, 2 nuts and 10 screws, could be shipped compactly all over the world and only before be assembled on site.
The film team shot in locations such as the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the factory in Bystřice pod Hostýnem in the Czech Republic and visited the Thonet Vienna brothers, who are based in Turin.