Ken-David Masur opens his seventh Civic season with Beethoven’s Fifth

Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony opens with one of the most recognizable motifs in classical music, consisting of four notes that are often associated with the idea of fate knocking at the door. Despite its familiarity, Ken-David Masur, principal conductor of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, discovers something new each time he revisits this piece.

“It’s always such a powerful work,” Masur said in a recent interview. “Each time that you explore it, that you’re confronted with it, you understand something new about life — something that is inescapable, something that is so powerful, that Beethoven wants us to know about what connects all of us as human beings.”

Masur will lead the Fifth Symphony, along with works by Iman Habibi and Paul Hindemith, in the first concerts of Civic’s 2025/26 season, on Oct. 26 at Senn High School and Oct. 27 in Orchestra Hall.

In his view, the four-note motif presents a question, then repeats it with more insistence, relentlessly urging “a confrontation with oneself and with the realities of the present.” After this arresting start, “we hear these soft entrances of the strings, trying to respond to these questions,” Masur said. “It goes under your skin because you feel that you’re part of this process of trying to understand the world.”

“It is a wonder of a symphony, because after this opening movement that’s almost like a migraine — it’s something that is so incessantly going through your mind, something that you’re wondering about, something that doesn’t let you go, something that keeps you up at night — [Beethoven] writes a second movement, which is so extraordinarily beautiful,” Masur said.

While the descriptor “pastoral” is explicitly connected to Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony, Masur considers the Fifth to be “a major precursor” to that piece, citing its evocation of bird calls, forest wildlife and voices echoing across a valley. “The second movement is, to me, a great example of the Beethovenian stroll through the woods,” he said.

"Each time that you explore it, that you’re confronted with it, you understand something new about life — something that is inescapable, something that is so powerful, that Beethoven wants us to know about what connects all of us as human beings.” — Ken-David Masur on Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5

Beethoven’s affinity for nature also inspired the first piece on Civic’s program: Jeder Baum spricht (Every Tree Speaks) by Iranian Canadian composer Iman Habibi. Commissioned by the Philadelphia Orchestra to commemorate Beethoven’s 250th birthday in 2020, Habibi’s piece is “an unsettling rhapsodic reflection on the climate catastrophe, written in dialogue with Beethoven’s Fifth and Sixth symphonies,” Habibi said in his program note. The title comes from a note that Beethoven wrote during one of his many walks in Vienna’s parks and woodlands: “Almighty in the forest! I am blessed, happy in the forest! Every tree speaks through you!”

Masur also admires the interplay between the two works. “Beethoven was one of the early climate activists of his time, bringing attention to the fact that we have to take care of our nature, because nature is really what gives us the tools to understand where our music is inspired,“ he said. ”The Fifth Symphony already has some of that, and then Iman Habibi, more literally, took that to heart.”

In 2020, Masur joined musicians around the world to participate in the Beethoven Pastoral Project, which aimed “to draw attention to the theme of ‘mankind and nature’” and “to deal actively with today’s urgent questions of environmental protection and global sustainability.” As part of these efforts, artists and audience members were encouraged to reduce carbon emissions by taking public transportation rather than driving to concerts. Masur hopes that Civic patrons will consider doing the same for the ensemble’s October performances.

Rounding out the program is Paul Hindemith’s Symphonic Metamorphosis on Themes of Carl Maria von Weber. Hindemith, a German-born composer who became a U.S. citizen in 1946, was popular in his adopted country and conducted the Chicago Symphony Orchestra several times. Symphonic Metamorphosis, though not considered a pastoral work, shares a different connection to Beethoven, Masur said. The piece draws on themes from Weber’s incidental music for Turandot, a commedia dell’arte play translated by Friedrich Schiller — the German poet who wrote “An die Freude” (Ode to Joy), which was famously set to music in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.  

As he begins his seventh season with the Civic Orchestra, Masur looks forward to working with “the extraordinary young talent that comes to the orchestra, and being in conversation with them through music, but also in conversation with them at a table to discuss how we want music and the work that we do to reflect the challenges that we face, as a society and as humanity.”

“They are so interested and curious and have such a passion and fire to communicate with every cell in their body,” he said of Civic musicians. “They find ways that music can be an initiator and something to overcome hesitations, to have dialogue and conversation about important topics, difficult topics and events. And that’s what is exciting for me, every year."