MDR Symphony Orchestra plays Ives, Schönberg and Shostakovich

From the collection “114 Songs” the concert evening’s program includes eight varied songs ranging from impressionistic nature painting, dramatic scenes, march-like quickstep and atonality: a song that baritone Thomas Hampson devotes himself to with particular success. The American opera star has received numerous awards for his work and is now returning as a guest to the MDR Symphony Orchestra. The orchestral versions of the songs were commissioned by Dennis Russell Davies in 2016 for the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra – sophisticated arrangements by the composer and pianist William Bolcom, who was born in Seattle in 1938.

The composer Arnold Schönberg, who was branded “degenerate” by the National Socialists and emigrated to the USA, considered it his own “moral duty […]to take a stand against tyranny.”. And so he denounced Hitler’s strategy of extermination and contempt for humanity in his “Ode to Napoleon” written in 1942. The work for piano (Charlotte Steppes), speaker (Thomas Hampson) and strings is based on a poem of the same name by Lord Byron, which was written as a direct response to Napoleon’s abdication in April 1814 and callously takes account of the man who had become a dictator.

Shostakovich’s 6th Symphony is unusual in its three-movement structure, which begins with an extended Largo. In 1939, the composer, who was accused of formalism and threatened by Stalin’s state apparatus, processed melancholy, thoughtfulness and paralysis in mental coldness – a mournful music for his Russia. The following two movements contrast all the more: emphatically optimistic, Allegro and Presto are sparkling. With irony and grotesqueness, Shostakovich parodies the positive facade of the state in its unbearable, prescribed heroism.

The concert will be broadcast on November 7th at 8:03 p.m. on MDR KLASSIK, NDR Kultur and radio3. You can then listen to it on www.mdr-klasseik.de.