‘A breathtaking documentary about the greatest symphony of all time.’ ‘Not just for fans of classical music!’ You have been warned.

Struggling to extricate itself from the clutches of marketing hyperbole and a vacuous voiceover (‘To unravel the mystery of the Ninth Symphony you have to travel the globe’ – a silly thing to say even pre-Covid) is a serious and often touching film about the work’s universal appeal. Some of the celebrity names don’t help. Teodor Currentzis, Tan Dun and Gabriel Prokofiev succumb to the temptation to identify with the composer through his work, and that way hubris lies.

However, the leader of the Orchestre Symphonique Kimbanguiste in Kinshasa knows the score. ‘I would start with the word “Attention”. This is music full of emotion, full of surprises. You can feel that there is something in this music but you can’t say exactly what.’ He’s talking about the symphony’s whole journey, unlike almost everyone else. As an identifier in the documentary and the world at large, ‘Beethoven’s Ninth’ stands almost exclusively for its finale – and not even the finale, for the ‘Ode to Joy’ theme and for the mantra of Schiller’s opening line, drained of all meaning by its constant iteration.

Yutaka Sado conducts a choral rehearsal in Osaka like a therapy session, and it’s easy to be cynical when you learn that each of the 10,000 singers involved has paid the equivalent of €700 to take part in the annual mass ‘Daiku’ performance. Therapy of a far more profound nature, for which the Ninth is but a channel, is at work in Barcelona, where deaf youngsters and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra learn from each other, watching and listening. Exactly why this piece, these words, should have become the symbol for a young Brazilian viola player in search of a way to support her family and raise them from the favelas: that’s the subject of another film. View this one – do sample it online – as an exhibition, erratically curated but beautifully assembled, on the strange fortunes of a musical landmark.