“Surprise!” tells of my surprise birthday party; but that was just part 1.

My actual birthday Saturday began on son Zak-and-Charlotte’s nearby porch, holding their daughter/our first grand-baby Ophelia. She was eight days old the day I turned 80; the day between the birthdays of NRBQ founders Terry Adams and Joey Spampinato.

That afternoon, I joined vintage friends, some half-remembered, at my high school reunion – Bishop Gibbons-Notre Dame, or the reverse, class of 1964 – in a Thacher Park picnic pavilion.

Name tag from a previous reunion

In this gathering – which I’m claiming as part 2 of my birthday celebration – three times as much food as we all could consume in days filled tables in a pot-luck of barbecue, sandwiches, salads and desserts. Most nourishing of all were memories and current lives shared; marveling at who’d made it and hoping those who hadn’t are all OK but knowing some aren’t. Two friends who’d attended my surprise party were also at the Thacher Park gathering where everybody sang “Happy Birthday” to me and another Michael whose birthday is Tuesday.

As usual, leaving was long; head for the exit and folks gather for more conversation.

Then, part 3: Ellie, our daughter Pisie and I drove to Saratoga Performing Arts Center to see the Philadelphia Orchestra play Beethoven’s Symphony No, 9.

As SPAC CEO Elizabeth Sobol announced, the Philadelphians had played Beethoven’s 9th in its venue-premiere performance 60 years ago. She hailed the epic work for orchestra and chorus as a “miracle of human experience,” noting its idealistic content and that Beethoven had created it purely as an act of imagination while deaf, unable ever to hear what many consider his masterpiece.

The concert began with Mississippi-born composer William Grant Still’s nature-worshipping five-movement Wood Notes. A sort of thematic parallel to Beethoven’s 6th, it described natural environments and events in melodies both intimate and assertive and with dynamic but deliberate development that reminded me of Dvorak’s use of folk themes, Debussy’s tonal atmospheres and Copland’s uplift.

Beethoven’s 9th may fit the sometimes dismissive “warhorse” category of over-familiar classical concert fare. But it is so well know for very good reasons: It’s majestic, expressive and emotional in powerful, compelling ways. 

While we’ve all heard it, even in cartoons and commercials, hearing its detail and drive live onstage still felt thrilling Saturday, particularly its dazzling and intricate detail. 

Philadelphia Orchestra Music and Artistic Director Yannick Nezet-Seguin primed us for an especially poignant and powerful performance by honoring three retiring Orchestra players. Warm words and hugs to the two players onstage felt genuinely touching. Nezet-Sequin also praised Saturday’s opening piece, Stills’s Wood Notes. He hoped hearing this rarely-played,  very American composition would encourage us to hear it again; then mildly bragged that “we may have spoiled it for you” with a performance that felt and sounded superb.

So did the Beethoven, which he, like Music Haven Presenting Artistic Director Mona Golub, urges recognition of “our common humanity.” Big sentiments for a big piece, concluding in its famous climactic choral movement extolling joy for all on this earth.

Attentively operated video cameras carried images to wide raised screens. Visual perspectives shifted from front views of dark-clad Nezet-Seguin, with the audience in the dark background, to brighter views of the full white-clad orchestra or close-ups of soloists or sections. These visual changes at times coincided with those in the density and tone of the music.

The three early movements prepared us for the finale’s cathartic drama. And there was no impatient toe-tapping in the crowd through the tumultuous fanfares of the first, the peace of the second and dignified serenity of the third. Conducting from memory, without a score, Nezet-Seguin pushed quickly from the third movement into the energetic finale as four vocal soloists entered from stage right, adding suspense.

The fabled Philadelphia smoothness impressed, as expected; but the emergence of small, detailed elements felt even more effective. We’ve all heard Beethoven’s 9th, but the clarity they brought to it Saturday exerted a fresh force. A trumpet burst here, a subtle woodwind blend there, these eloquent gestures made it feel subtly new.

Beethoven teases us some in the orchestral build up to the sublime moment when the voices rise from behind the players. Saturday those voices were Albany Pro Musica, our chorus of neighbors as massed virtuosi, guided by Jose Daniel Flores-Caraballo. The four celebrity soloists had their say, but hearing the massed might of the chorus hit as a full-body rush.

Voices subsided, then rose again, in waves of emotion-as-words in Schiller’s “Ode to Joy.” They sang of wishes that “all men become brothers” and consoled “Be embraced, ye millions!”

Perfect sentiments for a magnificent birthday party, with orchestra and chorus.