Beethoven's Ninth, Freude!

Sirius XM's "Symphony Hall" station had a top-75 countdown over the Labor Day weekend. Listeners had voted for their favorite pieces. I enjoyed listening to the station off and on over the weekend. #2 was Dvorak's New World Symphony. I figured #1 must be Beethoven's Ninth, or possibly Vaughan Williams' "The Lark Ascending" which tops British polls of this kind. Sure enough, it was Beethoven's Ninth.

When I was little, I loved the Peanuts comics and enjoyed getting paperback collections of the strips. Nearly every December 16, the story concerned Beethoven’s birthday and Schroeder’s celebration of it. Of course, Schroeder also performed Beethoven sonatas and other works on his toy piano.

Thus inspired by a favorite comic strip, I liked certain Beethoven compositions when I was young. In those days, the Huntley-Brinkley evening news on NBC concluded with the scherzo from Beethoven’s Ninth. I wrote NBC to find out the title and got a letter back!

Subsequently, I found a used LP of the symphony at our hometown library’s annual book sale. I Googled what I remembered of that old album and actually found a copy at this site:
https://www.amazon.com/Beethoven-Symphony-No-Minor-Choral/dp/B008CL8B64  I "borrowed" the photographs of the album from there. Here is some information about the recording itself, which is from 1956: https://www.pristineclassical.com/products/pasc293 What fun to relive a childhood memory of such a beloved symphony.