Welcome to this digital edition of Phillip Huscher's Program Notes for upcoming concerts by the CSO Sep 26-28. The season-long celebration of the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth opens with a program dedicated entirely to his music. Riccardo Muti, who conducts all nine Beethoven symphonies this season, begins with the ebullient, classically scaled First. Unprecedented in proportion and epic in scope, the groundbreaking Eroica Symphony demonstrates how powerfully Beethoven redefined the musical language of his time, launching classical music into the romantic era.