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Freude: On Hearing Beethoven’s 9th Symphony after a Two-Year Pandemic Delay
The master couldn’t hear his work, but here we are listening together— where the flowing waters meet— to Beethoven’s final symphony. The contrasts and crescendos at times too much: a smile releases the mind’s discomfiture. The trumpet player drinks some water, waiting for his chance, the ringing choir is a morose tribunal peering down on…