  Only the brave or foolhardy would dare to reimagine some of
the greatest music ever written, so how did Riccardo Chailly
convince five composers to do just that? Riccardo Chailly,
conductor 'A new response' … Riccardo Chailly. PR  The Leipzig
Gewandhaus Orchestra should know all there is to know about
Beethoven's nine symphonies. For a start, they're one of the
oldest orchestras in the world, and even more importantly, they
were the first to perform a complete cycle of Beethoven's
symphonies, in 1825 and 1826 – when Beethoven was still alive.
Since then, conductors from Felix Mendelssohn to Wilhelm
Furtwängler have given their interpretations of the mighty nine
with the Gewandhaus players. The orchestra even has an annual
tradition of playing Beethoven's Ninth, the climactic choral
symphony, every Hogmanay to a perennially packed house at home
in Leipzig. These symphonies are in the musicians' blood, the
warp and weft of each part of their DNA.  Which all makes what
their chief conductor is up to with his i