Join Our Members List For Exclusive Reports
Beethoven was deaf and living under the occupation of Napoleon’s forces when he wrote his 9th Symphony, set to a poem by Friedrich Schiller, Ode to Joy.”
Japan had been nuked not once but twice, losing horribly in the Second World War, when it arose from its ashes and formed, among other impressive things, the Hyogo Performing Arts Center Orchestra, located in the town of Nishinomiya, between the cities of Osaka and Kobe.
The Orchestra performs Beethoven’s 9th Symphony once a year with a 10,000-person choir.
This performance was held one year, almost to the day after the Fukushima earthquake and tsunami, which quickly killed roughly 20,000 people in the area and made another 200,000 people homeless – families who can never return to the radiation Exclusion Zone, that was their home for countless generations.
With all the bad news; wars, rumors of wars going around, I thought it would be good to remind ourselves of the power and beauty that resides within the human spirit, in this March 2012 performance of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” by the Hyogo Orchestra, joined by a choir of 10,000 singers.
Add comment