Nicola Lisle looks forward eagerly to the Sheldonian Theatre's 350th birthday concert which marks the start of a five-year celebration

When Paul Coones, chairman of the curators at the Sheldonian Theatre, decided to put on a concert to celebrate the 350th birthday of this iconic Oxford landmark, it didn’t take him long to pick the perfect piece — Beethoven’s gloriously uplifting Ninth Symphony.

“It’s a classic celebratory work for big events,” Paul says. “It also has a big link with laying of foundation stones, because what we’re celebrating this year is the 350th anniversary of the laying of the foundation stone.

“Wagner conducted a famous performance in 1872 when he laid the foundation stone for the Festival Theatre in Bayreuth. He took great inspiration from Beethoven’s Ninth.

“I think Beethoven took orchestral music to its ultimate limit, and in the final it’s screaming out for the human voice, which is what it gets, and Wagner took that as his template for marrying symphonic music with drama and vocal performance to produce a new art form.

“So for these reasons I thought Beethoven’s Ninth was a good piece to do.”

The occasion is certainly worth celebrating. After 350 years, the Sheldonian Theatre is still being used for its original purpose of hosting university ceremonies, although it has expanded into a venue for concerts and lectures.

It has also changed remarkably little in three and a half centuries.

“The building has survived brilliantly well,” Paul says. “It has been strengthened in one or two places, and the upper gallery has been altered. The organ case is a late 19th-century addition by Sir Thomas Jackson, who built the Examination Schools.

“But essentially, the building is as it always was. We’re very lucky that there’s nothing else quite like it. And it was Sir Christopher Wren’s first major commission.”

Paul was particularly keen to inv-olve young people in the birthday concert, and a specially selected choir and orchestra has been put together by chorus master Tom Hammond-Davies, drawn largely from the university and local schools, with some semi-professional performers involved.

Paul, a former geography lecturer at Hertford College, will be conducting. “It is an enormously complicated piece, and I spent several months working hard on the score. It’s been a revelation to me. And I’ve always loved it as a piece. It’s also a chance for young people to do a big work they wouldn’t normally get to do.”

Plans for the next five years include performances of Handel’s oratorio Athalia, which premiered at the Sheldonian in 1733, and Haydn’s Oxford Symphony, which was performed there in 1791. On both occasions, the composers were in Oxford to receive honorary degrees.

Paul also hopes to celebrate some of the other people awarded honorary degrees, as well as putting on exhibit-ions and lectures, before bringing the celebrations to a big climax in 2019 to mark the 350th anniversary of the Sheldonian’s opening.

Meanwhile, he is hoping for a good turnout for the start of the celebrat-ions on Sunday. “There’s no interval, because I wanted a short concert that will encourage people to come,” he says. “Hopefully it will give people an experience they will never forget.”

350th Anniversary Celebration Concert
Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford
Sunday, 8pm
Tickets: 01865 305305 or visit www.ticketsoxford.com