Closing concert - Beethovens Missa solemnis - with the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra

Divine majesty and human love close the 75th Bergen International Festival.

200 years since the death of Beethoven, the 2027 edition of the Bergen International Festival ends with the composer’s masterpiece and his perennial plea for peace in a time of war: the Missa solemnis. Hundreds of musicians gather for the work Beethoven deemed his own greatest achievement. 

Like Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, the Missa solemnis is a colossal piece for four vocal soloists, orchestra and choir – so big that Beethoven required specially-enlarged sheets of paper to write it down in 1824. The result is a deeply moving journey through music of all moods and textures in which Beethoven captures his own vision of the majesty of God in music.  

Conductor Thomas Guggeis leads four world-class soloists, local choirs and the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra in a work known for its intensity, complexity and brilliance whose combination of divine majesty and human love could only have come from Beethoven.

Collage: Ludwig van Beethoven (painting by Joseph Karl Stieler), notes from Missa solemnis, Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra (photo: Lars Svenkerud)