A Tribute to Herbert von Karajan (1908-89), mythical leader who championed 'serious' music on television and made a sensation by adding the 10th Symphony of Shostakovich to his repertoire recording it twice. Beethoven's 5th became, in its post-Napoleonic and then European context, the most played work in the world - today joined by Schubert's unfinished Symphony.
The juxtaposition of these two 'proclamations' of uncontrollable energy is no longer a political or even aesthetic provocation, but brings together two worlds, one of freedom, courage and the almost military discipline taken over from Haydn, but also of fraternity announcing the 9th, hymn to the glory of humanity, the other, a film of tragic images, of despair, terror, violence, for only three minutes of triumph. Since its creation in 1953 by Mravinsky, this work has gradually also imposed its worrying universality.
