WNYC Radio's Beethoven Festival

WNYC, New York Public Radio® hosts a weeklong "Beethoven Festival." Designed to delight and inform aficionados and novices alike, the festival celebrates the music, the spirit and the person of Ludwig van Beethoven.

Each night during the festival, Evening Music invites listeners to tune in to illuminating in-studio conversations with conductors, composers and musicians who are shaping our understanding of Beethoven's legacy - Ben Zander, Rob Kapilow, and Robert Bass, among others - and to experience some of the most thrilling renditions of Beethoven's work ever recorded.

The festival culminates with a live broadcast from Avery Fisher Hall of the London Symphony Orchestra's final performance of their complete presentation of Beethoven's Symphonies, conducted by Bernard Haitink, as part of the Takeda Global Concert Series. (Complete broadcast schedule below).

Beethoven Festival Schedule
Missed it? Listen to archived interviews with visiting artists and guests on our Evening Music Show pages:

• Saturday, October 7: "Beethoven 101: A Crash Course" with composer/conductor/commentator Rob Kapilow
• Sunday, October 8: "Beethoven as Visionary: The String Quartets" with Lawrence Dutton, violist for the Emerson String Quartet
• Monday, October 9: "The Spirit is Willing: Beethoven's Vocal Music" with Robert Bass, Music Director of the Collegiate Chorale
• Tuesday, October 10: Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 recorded in performance at Avery Fisher Hall, December 24, 2004 Kurt Masur conducting the New York Philharmonic and the New York Choral Artists. Soloists soprano Christine Brewer, mezzo-soprano Marietta Simpson, tenor Thomas Studebaker, and bass-baritone Albert Dohmen.
• Wednesday, October 11: "Beethoven as Revolutionary: The Symphonies" with Ben Zander, Conductor, Boston Philharmonic Orchestra
• Thursday, October 12: "Beethoven's Laboratory: The Piano Sonatas" with pianist/author Robert Taub
• Friday, October 13: Live Broadcast of LSO's Final Performance at Avery Fisher Hall, with Bernard Haitink conducting. Haitink will conduct a dazzling all-Beethoven program featuring the Symphony No. 1, the Leonore Overture No. 3, and the Symphony No. 7. Part of Lincoln Center's "Great Performers" series.

WNYC's Beethoven Festival is funded in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the National Endowment for the Arts.