Ein Angebot der Stiftung Zukunft Gewandhaus zu Leipzig Projekte gGmbH
31. Dezember 2025, 17 Uhr, LIVE
Beethovens 9. Sinfonie zum Jahreswechsel
aus dem Gewandhaus im Gewandhaus Radio
This year, the Gewandhaus Orchestra’s New Year’s Eve concert featuring Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony will be broadcast live on Gewandhaus Radio. Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla will conduct. Following on from 2020 and 2021, this is the Gewandhaus’s third in-house media production of this traditional concert.
New Year’s Eve concerts by the Gewandhausorchester on the radio
Public broadcasters recognized the popularity early on: the Gewandhausorchester´s New Year’s Eve concerts were regularly broadcast on radio from 1958 and on television from 1961, becoming engraved in the collective memory through this media coverage.
The years 2020 and 2021 mark a turning point. Due to official bans imposed because of the coronavirus pandemic, no events with audiences were allowed to take place during these years. Nevertheless, the Gewandhaus managed to produce Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony for audiences on New Year’s Eve: In 2020, the piano duo Shalamov, together with the Gewandhausorchester´s principal timpanist, Tom Greenleaves, recorded the Ninth Symphony in D minor, Op. 125, in the version for two pianos (1851) produced by Franz Liszt, supplemented by Beethoven’s original timpani part. The recording was produced by Gewandhaus and Two Syde Media in cooperation with the Steinway Prizewinner Concerts Network & the ARD International Music Competition.
The spectacular production was broadcast on the Gewandhaus Orchestra’s website.
In 2021, the second year of the pandemic, Armida Film Produktion produced a classical performance by the Gewandhausorchester conducted by Andris Nelsons on behalf of the Gewandhaus – also without an audience in the hall. The concert was broadcast live on the website goetterfunken.live, which had been enhanced with a so-called ‘second screen’, as well as on the television and radio program of cooperation partner Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk (MDR).
The Gewandhaus’s third in-house production of this concert will be broadcast live and exclusively on Gewandhaus Radio on December 31, 2025: Under the baton of Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, the Gewandhausorchester will perform together with the MDR Radio Choir, Gewandhaus Choir, Gewandhaus Children’s Choir, and vocal soloists Sarah Traubel (soprano), Xenia Puskarz Thomas (mezzo-soprano), Patrick Grahl (tenor), and Michael Nagy (bass).
History of the Gewandhausorchester’s New Year’s Eve concerts
The impetus for one of Leipzig’s most popular concert events came in 1918 from Barnet Licht, music coordinator at the Arbeiterbildungsinstitut -ABI- (Workers’ Educational Institute), and Dr. Rudolf Franz, arts editor at the Leipziger Volkszeitung newspaper. It is thanks to them that Gewandhausorchester performed Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony for the first time at the turn of the year in 1918.
The concert was given on the occasion of the ABI’s “Peace and Freedom Celebration” in the Alberthalle of the Leipzig Krystallpalast. Licht, who knew
the then Gewandhaus conductor Arthur Nikisch well, was quickly able to enthuse the world-famous musician with the idea, and despite its full schedule of performances at the opera, church, and Gewandhaus, the Gewandhausorchester was also willing to play the midnight concert for the ABI. The New Year’s Eve concert was not a concert organized by the Gewandhaus management – the orchestra and conductor were hired by the ABI for the New Year’s Eve spectacle. Until 1933, the Workers’ Educational Institute organized the midnight concerts on New Year’s Eve, but only once more, in 1929, was Beethoven’s 9th Symphony on the program.
After World War II, the Gewandhaus remembered the successful Beethoven performance that the workers’ association had organized on
New Year’s Eve 1918 and revived the concert as an event organized by the Gewandhaus itself.
In the first venue after the war, the Capitol cinema, the first post-war New Year’s Eve performance of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony took place in 1945.
Since then, the work has been performed annually at the turn of the year in the Gewandhaus program with the Gewandhausorchester. So in 2025,
the New Year’s Eve performance of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony with the Gewandhaus Orchestra will take place for the 80th time (since 1945).
Beethoven’s 9th Symphony and the Gewandhausorchester
Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony was performed by the Gewandhausorchester for the first time on March 6, 1826, during Beethoven’s lifetime, as part of the
world’s first complete Beethoven cycle. Since 1862, during the era of Gewandhauskapellmeister Carl Reinecke, the Ninth has always been performed at the end of the season in spring.
31. Dezember 2025, 17 Uhr
Live im Gewandhaus Radio
Gewandhaus Radio ist ein Agebot der Stiftung Zukunft Gewandhaus zu Leipzig Projekte gGmbH
Gewandhausorchester
MDR-Rundfunkchor
GewandhausChor
GewandhausKinderchor
Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla Dirigentin
Sarah Traubel Sopran
Xenia Puskarz Thomas Mezzosopran
Patrick Grahl Tenor
Michael Nagy Bass