Barbara Weissenbeck’s exciting cinematic journey through time for the premiere of the world-famous symphony – on May 9th on ORF 2
Vienna (OTS) – On May 7, 1824, Ludwig van Beethoven’s now world-famous 9th Symphony was premiered in Vienna’s Kärntnertortheater. To mark the 200th anniversary of this event, a new, 52-minute documentary by Barbara Weissenbeck takes you on a journey through time into the exciting past of the former cultural institution and thus also to the premiere of Beethoven’s work. The film “Beethoven’s Ninth and the Kärntnertortheater – A Musical Crime Thriller” sets out on a detective search for the historical plans of the stage house and, thanks to breathtaking 3D animations, “resurrects” it not only visually but also acoustically. Also shown is the adventurous creation process of the 9th Symphony, which is very well documented using the composer’s conversation notebooks and provides the musical framework for the documentary. At the end of the film, the last choral passages of the 4th 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. On Europe Day, on Thursday, May 9, 2024 (Ascension Day), at 9:10 p.m. on ORF 2 (Dacapo: Sunday, May 12, 9:05 a.m., ORF 2) celebrates the production of ORF TV culture as part of a comprehensive ORF Beethoven focus has its television premiere. Yesterday, on Thursday, April 25th, it was presented in the Vienna Hotel Sacher, which is located approximately on the site of the Kärntnertortheater, which was demolished in 1874.
Traxl: “Adventurous Research Project” and “Cinematic Ode to Joy”
ORF-TV culture director Martin Traxl, who led the film evening: “We not only retold the birth of a miracle, we also reconstructed the place where this miracle was born. We not only wanted to know what the Kärntnertortheater looked like, but also what it sounded like. It was an adventurous research project that, after setbacks and disappointments, ultimately led to happiness and success – a little like Master Beethoven himself. A cinematic ode to joy, for which everyone involved deserves great thanks!”
Weissenbeck: “Sensational find” and Beethoven’s “actually impossible task”
Filmmaker Barbara Weissenbeck, who also acted as producer, screenwriter (together with Nicholas Pöschl) and editor, reports on the adventurous project: “The film began with the idea of telling a journey to the premiere of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. On the one hand, we accomplished this musically with an original sound orchestra: it was incredibly great and very time-consuming to bring 90 musicians into a studio and make recordings of the 9th Symphony with them or recreate the premiere. The second extremely exciting task was to restore the location of the premiere, the Kärntnertortheater in Vienna, which has not existed since 1873/1874.”
As successfully implemented in the ORF film she designed for the break of the 2023 New Year’s Concert on the occasion of 150 years of the World Exhibition in Vienna, Weissenbeck and her team once again worked with innovative 3D animations. But it went one step further: For the documentation, the lost building with its special acoustics was to be reconstructed in such a way that it was almost possible to recreate the space and sound from Beethoven’s time and thus bring the 9th Symphony and its premiere from the past into the past Get here and now.
As a second, interesting narrative thread, the Viennese filmmaker included in her documentation the search for plans and documents for the reconstruction of the stage house, which, as it initially became clear, hardly existed or only existed in an outdated version before the theater fire in 1761. This venture, in which Weissenbeck was supported by architect Bernhard Rapf, actually turned out to be a “crime story,” but was ultimately crowned with surprising success. “The real sensation of this film is that we discovered plans that had previously been hidden in a folder in the graphic collection of the Vienna Albertina and had not yet been discovered by anyone. These plans look so beautiful and so new because no one has ever pulled them out before. Thanks to this sensational find, we were then able to build the animations,” says the filmmaker.
What part does Beethoven’s 9th Symphony ultimately play in your film? “This possibly even Beethoven’s major work, which was premiered there, accompanies the film musically and also makes up about half of the story. It shows Beethoven’s difficulties in completing the fourth movement because he struggled a lot with himself and his deafness and at the same time had a lot to do with organizing musicians, choir and singers who had canceled, finding copyists and raising money , easy to organize everything. This may also bring a new look to this symphony. During this work, and especially during the editing, I kept trying to imagine what it’s like to be almost deaf and do all that. “It’s actually an impossible task,” says Weissenbeck.
ORF Beethoven Festival on TV and radio: With concerts, documentaries, feature films, radio features
Following the TV premiere of “Beethoven’s Ninth and the Kärntnertortheater – A Musical Thriller” on May 9th, there will be a top-class performance of the composition, which is one of the most symbolic works in European music history, on the same evening on ORF 2, conducted by Riccardo Muti from the Vienna Music Association on the schedule: “Beethoven’s Ninth turns 200 – anniversary concert of the Vienna Philharmonic” (10:20 p.m.; already on Tuesday, May 7th, live on Ö1). ORF 2 will then show the historical drama “Louis van Beethoven” (11.40 p.m.), co-produced by ORF in 2020, by Niki Stein with Tobias Moretti in the title role, which looks at the person behind the extraordinary artist from different perspectives.
The Beethoven Festival on television starts on April 28th on ORF III: The documentary “Beethoven: The Tenth – How could it have continued?” (Sunday, April 28th, 7:20 p.m.) by Hannes M. Schalle presents an exciting musicological Project to complete the 10th Symphony, which was only left in sketches, using artificial intelligence.
In addition to other documentaries related to the topic, the live, time-shifted transmission of the 9th Symphony in the interpretation of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra from the Great Hall of the Vienna Konzerthaus on the 200th anniversary of the premiere represents the ORF III highlight. Under the motto “Europe celebrates Beethoven – ORF III celebrates with us!” (Tuesday, May 7th, 8:15 p.m.), the station will be part of a unique European television project: On this day, ARTE will present the four movements of Beethoven’s “Ninth” one after the other, live and time-shifted, from four European cities – performed by four Top orchestras, each with top-class musical direction. In addition to the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig with Andris Nelsons, the Orchester de Paris under Klaus Mäkelä and the Orchestra del Teatro alla Scala in Milan with Riccardo Chailly, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra under conductor Joana Mallwitz contributes the fourth and final movement with the famous “Ode to Joy”. .
Kulturradio Ö1 also honored the occasion with numerous programs:
“The myth-shrouded birth of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony” is the theme of “Opus – the Music Colloquium” (Wednesday, May 1st, 3:05 p.m.). Three editions of the “Selected” series (10:05 a.m.) are also dedicated to the famous work: The focus is on “Friedrich Schiller’s poem ‘Ode to Joy’ – not only set to music by Beethoven” (Monday, May 6th), “The kk Hoftheater next to the Kärntnertore” (Tuesday, May 7th) and “Beethoven’s work around the ‘Ninth’” (Wednesday, May 8th).
On the anniversary day of the premiere, Ö1 will broadcast the performance of the work live from the Vienna Musikverein under the motto “200 Years of the 9th Symphony” (Tuesday, May 7th, live at 7:30 p.m.): Under the musical direction of Riccardo Muti, the Vienna Philharmonic, Julia Kleiter (soprano), Marianne Crebassa (mezzo-soprano), Michael Spyres (tenor), Günther Groissböck (bass) and the Wiener Singverein sing.
Further information about the documentary “Beethoven’s Ninth and the Kärntnertortheater – A Musical Crime Thriller” is available in the press kit at presse.ORF.at. Further details on the Beethoven focus are available there or at oe1.ORF.at.