John Terauds – Toronto Star

With the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir and soloists, the young British conductor Matthew Halls led a performance of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony at Roy Thomson Hall on Wednesday night that captured much of the energy and excitement that its first audience must have felt at its premiere nearly 200 years ago. That’s no easy feat, especially when one considers that the final movement’s setting of Friedrich Schiller’s poem “Ode to Joy” is one of the best-known pieces of classical music.

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