Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, the Choral, was first heard in Vienna exactly 200 years ago, on May 7, 1824. To mark the anniversary of one of the greatest works of Western art, the symphony is the focus of celebrations all around the world. Today, there are performances from Paris (Orchestre de Paris and Klaus Mäkelä), Leipzig (Gewandhausorchester and Andris Nelsons), Milan (Orchestra of La Scala and Riccardo Chailly), and two from Vienna (Vienna SO and Petr Popelka and the Vienna Philharmonic and Riccardo Muti) as well as London (National SO and Rimma Sushanskaya at Cadogan Hall). The performances by Nelsons, Mäkelä, Chailly and Popelka will be broadcast by Arte this evening, one movement from each conductor, to create a composite performance.

The performance conducted by Riccardo Muti (which will be broadcast live by Mezzo TV) will be recorded and made available (in both visual and audio versions) shortly after the concert by Apple Music and Apple Music Classical.

BBC Radio 3 will be broadcasting  a recording of the work at 2pm (BST) with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra & Chorus conducted by Karina Kanellakis.

Gramophone is celebrating this major musical anniversary with a new podcast in which James Jolly talks to the conductor Antonello Manacorda about the Ninth, which has just been released to complete his symphony cycle with Akademie Potsdam for Sony Classical. From the archive, we’ve a Gramophone Collection by Richard Osborne which looks at the Choral Symphony’s recorded history. Riccardo Chailly talks about the symphony with Michael McManus and Richard Wigmore considers how and why Beethoven still speaks to us today.