Beethovenfest Bonn: Symphonies and Premieres

"Rossija" -- this year's Beethovenfest Bonn is focused on Russia. As media partner and one of the festival's three major sponsors, Deutsche Welle is helping bring the month-long music event to the world.

Every year, Deutsche Welle supports youth orchestras from different countries in the context of the Beethoven festival. South Africa's National Youth Orchestra was selected for 2006. The orchestra spent a week making music in Beethoven's birth city.

Deutsche Welle commissioned composer Hans Huyssen to write a piece for orchestra, which the young South African musicians performed in the Beethovenhalle Bonn on September 9.

DW-WORLD.DE is offering as audio files selected performances of works by Beethoven and some of the musical geniuses that succeeded him. A total of four Beethoven concerts and three original works commissioned by Deutsche Welle, from both past and present Beethoven festivals, will be available on our Web site.

We kicked it off with Beethoven's best-known work, the Ninth Symphony, the last movement of which became the European anthem in 1985.