The Rutland Herald highlighted a beloved New Year’s Day tradition: For the 16th year since 2011 (skipping only once due to COVID), the Green Mountain Mahler Festival—founded in 2002 by bassist and Larner Professor of Medicine Dan Weiss, M.D., Ph.D.—presented a performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 on New Year’s Day at the Elley-Long Music Center in Colchester, with a second performance added on January 2. Proceeds benefited Green Mountain Habitat for Humanity.

“Performing Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is a longstanding European tradition that the Green Mountain Mahler Festival instituted here in 2011,” Weiss saaid. “This has been an incredibly successful and fulfilling experience, all the more as each of the performances benefits a worthy charitable organization. All told, we’ve raised over $150,000 over the years and the benefit performance has become a tradition. It’s such an incredible work and a joy to play each and every time.”

Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125, is regarded as one of the supreme achievements in the history of music. Its fourth and final movement calls for four vocal soloists and a chorus to join the orchestra, singing the famed text “Ode to Joy” by poet Friedrich Schiller.

Since its premiere in Vienna in 1824, the work has been seen as a celebration of humanity. Notably, Leonard Bernstein conducted a version at the Konzerthaus Berlin with “Freiheit (Freedom)” replacing “Freude (Joy)” to celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall during Christmas 1989.

A number of Larner community members—including Ariel Bensimhon, M.D., assistant professor of anesthesiology, double bass; Gerald Davis, M.D., professor of medicine emeritus, percussion; Theodore Marcy, M.D., M.P.H., professor of medicine emeritus, tenor; and Donald Mathews, M.D., professor and chair emeritus of anesthesiology, double bass—participated in the concert.

Read full story at the Rutland Herald

This topic was also covered by the Barre–Montpelier Times Argus