The Portland Symphony Orchestra’s 2016-17 concert season will include a performance of one of the most revered works in the history of classical music. To close its three-season celebration of Beethoven, the orchestra under the direction of Robert Moody will perform Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony at Merrill Auditorium on April 23 and April 25, 2017.

It is among the best-known pieces in classical music, and has been performed to mark the end of strife worldwide for more than a century. Leonard Bernstein conducted a version of it after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and it received numerous performances after World Wars I and II, Moody said. Monday’s announcement came between performances by the orchestra at Merrill on Sunday and Tuesday.

The music director introduced the season Monday night at Merrill Auditorium. About 75 donors, subscribers and symphony board members attended the preview, which included a talk by Moody from the auditorium stage.

Moody chooses music based on a variety of influences. He keeps notes throughout the year, jotting down ideas based on music he hears on the radio, tracking emails from fans and suggestions by musicians. He called it “a wonderful marriage of that which is incredibly important to me and important to the orchestra and the community.”

The 2016-17 season begins in October and concludes the following May. As it has for the past two seasons, the orchestra will focus its creative energy on the symphonies of Beethoven. Moody has programmed Beethoven’s nine symphonies over three seasons, and has left Beethoven’s fourth, second and ninth symphonies for the final year of the three-year cycle.

Grammy Award-winning violinist and fiddler Mark O’Connor will join the orchestra for a pops concert in April 2017, and the PSO will pay tribute to classic rock in a program of music from the 1970s and ’80s in November. It will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” in February 2017.

On March 14, 2017, Moody will lead the orchestra in Brahms’ Requiem, with the Choral Art Society under the direction of Robert Russell. It’s a massive piece of music, probably written in response to the death of the composer’s mother. Moody said a professor once told him many years ago, “You will not have lived enough to take on the Brahms’ Requiem until you’re 40 years old.” Now approaching 50, Moody said it was time to tackle the beast.

 

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