Tickets Going Fast for Beethoven Symphonies

Tickets are still available for the Philharmonic Society of Orange County’s Beethoven symphony festival next month at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa. But they’re going fast.

“The Ninth and the Seventh concerts are the closest to being sold out,” Society Executive Director Dean Corey said Monday.

“The best way to get good seats for the Ninth Symphony is to buy the three-concert package series that has the Third, Fifth and Ninth Symphonies,” Corey said. “We’ve held back some of these packages so that people who want the best seats for the Ninth can get them.”

The concerts cap the society’s season-long Beethoven: The Age of Revolution and Romance festival.

John Eliot Gardiner will conduct the Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique and the Monteverdi Choir.

The festival opens May 17 with Symphonies Nos. 1 and 2. It will continue May 18 with the Third Symphony (“Eroica”); the Fourth, the Fifth and a lecture on Beethoven by Gardiner on May 19; and Nos. 6 and 7 on May 21; and concludes with Nos. 8 and 9 on May 22.

Everyone at opening night will get complimentary champagne to toast the composer, Corey said.

“The concert we have the most seats for is for the ‘Eroica,’ ” Corey said.

The concerts are “probably around 70% sold out right now,” he said. “About 700 people have bought various subscription packages. Maybe 300 of those have bought all nine symphonies.”

Single and series tickets are available. Tickets for the three-concert series range from $68 to $176. Tickets for all five concerts range from $104 to $284. Single tickets: $20 to $60. Information: (949) 553-2422.