The series Masters of Classical Music allows the listener to experience and enjoy great music from the Baroque period up to the present day in an entirely new way, offering a combination of documentary material and a complete performance of the featured work. The episode includes a live-recording of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony from the Philharmonie Berlin with the Berliner Philharmoniker and Maestro Claudio Abbado. In the accompanying documentary explains the renowned scholar Wulf Konold Beethoven’s life and the circumstances surrounding the composition of the Ninth Symphony. A detailed discussion of the composer’s aesthetic and political ideals, quotations from his contemporaries, as well as plentiful musical examples, help to bring this glorious masterpiece vividly to life.