The RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra and Chief Conductor Jaime Martín proudly take part in Beethoven – The European Tour: Nine Symphonies, Nine Cities, a broadcast of all nine Beethoven symphonies from nine European cities. This major celebration of Beethoven in the wake of the 250th anniversary of the composer’s birth in 2020 is a collaborative project by RTÉ with ARTE, the European culture channel, and ARTE’s European public partner channels.

The RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra’s performance, presented by Mary Kennedy, will be broadcast on RTÉ One and RTÉ Player on Sunday 6 June at 2.10pm to coincide with its broadcast on ARTE Concert online and on RTE lyric fm on Friday 18 June at 7pm.

Surprising contemporary audiences with its cheerfulness, energetic brio and mischievous wit, the earlier Second Symphony is Beethoven in excelsis. Its glorious, sunny vitality is all the more remarkable for having been composed while the composer’s crippling deafness had driven him to thoughts of suicide. Instead, it conducts itself with those most Beethovenian of traits – unfettered hope and optimism – to make it the most reassuring anthem for our own troubled times.

Composed in 1807 for the Austrian playwright Heinrich Joseph von Collin’s theatrical tragedy about the fifth-century BC Roman general, Gaius Marcus Coriolanus, the Coriolan Overture is a clenched first of molten emotions and high drama. A vivid, animated portrait of the legendary military rebel, his fatal ambition and his tender relationship with his controlling mother, Volumnia, it moves with relentless force towards its dramatic end in music of stirring passion, tempestuous power and dark poetry.