Beethoven Christmas.

Byline: Bob Keefer The Register-Guard

E u g e n e S y m p h o n y O r c h e s t r a

Is Beethoven's Ninth the new ``Messiah''?

Maybe that's a bit of a stretch. But there's some evidence that audiences burned out by yet another holiday performance of George Frideric Handel's gigantic choral work are flocking with more enthusiasm to hear Beethoven's last symphony, with its stirring choral finale and emphasis on world brotherhood.

The Eugene Symphony will test those waters on Saturday when, for the first time, it performs the Ninth as a special December concert and omits the traditional Handel from its season.

"The Ninth for Christmas, this is kind of an idea I borrowed," says symphony artistic director Giancarlo Guerrero.

In fact, the Ninth's journey to Eugene, from its 1824 premiere performance in Vienna, is weird and circuitous. Guerrero got the idea of doing the Ninth for Christmas a few years back from Eiji Oue, who was music director of the Minnesota Orchestra, where Guerrero was then associate director.

Oue, who was born in Hiroshima, acquired his love of the Ninth in his native Japan.

In Japan, it turns out, Beethoven's Ninth - and especially its fourth movement "Ode to Joy" - is a cult favorite during the holidays.

According to one version of the story, the Ninth got its foothold in Japan during World War I , when it was performed there by German prisoners of war.

These days the Ninth is practically an epidemic in Japan. One Tokyo orchestra performed the Ninth - called ``Daiku'' there - 29 times in a single season, and in one recent December you could choose from 77 performances of the symphony by various Tokyo orchestras and choruses.

"Japan has been one of the great hotbeds of classical music," Guerrero said. "If you want to make it in this business you have to have some kind of recognition in Japan."

The Ninth hasn't yet overtaken the "Messiah" as traditional holiday fare in the United States.

According to statistics compiled since 1988 by the American Symphony Orchestra League, the Ninth has been performed about one fifth as many times during the month of December as the "Messiah" has been.

But clearly the Ninth is on the move, not only in the United States but around the world.

It has a more liberal, international feel than Handel's deeply religious ``Messiah,'' and the Ninth has become associated with feel-good, we-are-the-world events for at least a generation.

It shows up in places as varied as the Olympics and the Stanley Kubrick movie of "A Clockwork Orange."

In 1989 Leonard Bernstein changed the words of the final chorus from "Ode to Joy" to "Ode to Freedom" in a performance that celebrated the fall of the Berlin Wall.

That same year students protesting in Beijing's Tiananmen Square broadcast the symphony through loudspeakers.

The melody to the "Ode to Joy" has been adopted as the official anthem of the European Union and is the unofficial anthem of the Sandinista movement in Nicaragua.

All that cultural baggage aside, the Ninth is a massive, long, challenging work of art. It runs for a full hour and requires, of course, a chorus and soloists in addition to the usual symphony orchestra.

``It's a very ambitious piece for our chorus and for the orchestra,'' Guerrero said. ``This is our biggest project of the year.''

Adding to the audience's experience on Saturday will be a high-tech experiment taken from the world of rock 'n' roll.

Mounted in the Hult's Silva Concert Hall will be two 9-by-12-foot video projection screens, one on each side of the stage. They will show live images of Guerrero and the symphony musicians taken by three separate cameras during the concert.

Symphony board member Carolyn Chambers is donating use of the equipment for the concert.

And Guerrero is all in favor of the screens.

"You can get a close-up of what the soloists are doing," he said. "We are being very careful that the people running this will be following the score and cueing the cameras as it goes along. It gives you a play by play of the symphony."

CONCERT PREVIEW Beethoven's Ninth Symphony What: Eugene Symphony and the Eugene Symphony chorus take on Beethoven's last and perhaps greatest symphony; the program also includes Vaughan Williams' ``Serenade to Music'' and Bruckner's Psalm 150. When: 8 p.m. Saturday Where: Hult Center's Silva Concert Hall, Seventh Avenue and Willamette Street Tickets: $15 to $51 (682-5000)