It's "Beethoven season." The run-up to the new year has long been marked in Japan with performances of Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 — known here simply as "daiku" — gloriously performed by large orchestras featuring around 80 instrumentalists and some 100 choir members or more.
In October, however, conductor Seiji Ozawa celebrated the 100th regular concert of the Mito Chamber Orchestra by performing the piece with much fewer instrumentalists — the MCO numbers 48, including the 26 core members.
"Everybody takes a large-member orchestra for granted for this piece," Ozawa tells The Japan Times. The 82-year-old has himself conducted the symphony many times, including a special performance during the opening ceremony of the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano that involved seven choirs in six countries around the world. In Beethoven's days, however, he notes the general size of an orchestra was much smaller.