Vladimir Jurowski & Pierre-Laurent Aimard

In 1905, the Russian Tsar ordered the shooting of a starving crowd in front of the Winter Palace, which was singing chorales and anthems – Shostakovich's Symphony No. 11 commemorates this event. Thirty-seven years later, the Nazis destroyed the Czech villages of Lidice and Ležáky and murdered their inhabitants.


Bohuslav Martinů commemorates the more than 2,000 victims by quoting the St. Wenceslas Chorale from the 12th century – an old Czech resistance anthem. Josef Suk used the same chorale in 1914 to symbolize the hope for a self-determined Czech Republic after the First World War.


Works performed:

• Bohuslav Martinů - "Lidice" - Funeral Music for Orchestra
  
• Josef Suk - Meditation on the Old Bohemian Chorale "St. Wenceslas" for String Orchestra, Op. 35a
  
• Arnold Schönberg - "Ode to Napoleon" for String Quartet, Piano, and Narrator, Op. 41
  
• Dmitri Shostakovich - Symphony No. 11 in G Minor, Op. 103 ("The Year 1905")
  

With

• Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra
  
• Vladimir Jurowski, Conductor
  
• Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Piano
  
• Omar Ebrahim, Narrator
  

Concert Introduction: 7:10 p.m., Steffen Georgi