Jacquot, Symphony of Fate and Schönberg

Three short tones and one long. Ludwig van Beethoven was a shining example that music doesn't have to be complicated to hit spot. And with the start of his famous Fifth Symphony, he gave the world a lesson in how quickly, elegantly and precisely you can set a mood and give the listener the feeling that now you have to tip your ears.

In other words, Chief Conductor Marie Jacquot and the Royal Chapel are grasping one of classical music's legendary heirlooms and a cornerstone of European culture when the notes of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony — popularly known as the Symphony of Fate — soar up against the gold ceiling above the Opera's Great Stage. In the symphony, Beethoven depicts a progression from the darkness of the dramatic 1st movement to the luminous finale, opening with a dashing fanfare. It's music you can't help but hum along to, and a symphony that's impossible not to get carried away by.

You'll have plenty of opportunities to stay, too, as Marie Jacquot leads the Chapel through Beethoven's overture to the staging of the play Coriolan, about the pride and fall of a victorious Roman field lord.

Then we change both century and composer when the German baritone Christian Gerhaher, one of the greatest lied-interpreters of his generation, takes the stage. He sings Arnold Schönberg's work Das Buch der hängenden Gärten, which was written on the back burner of the composer's own wrecked marriage and a newfound interest in poet Stefan George's accounts of an unhappy love affair. So expect a consistently dreamy atmosphere and a sense of fragile beauty and inevitable dissolution when Christian Gerhaher interprets Schönberg's wistful universe for the first time on Danish soil.