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11 April 2026 Wien (Vienna) (Austria)
Chan, Vinogradov / Schostakowitsch, Berlioz
ORF Radio Symphonie Orchester conducted by Elim Chan - Musikverein Wien
Program Info: ORF Radio Symphonie Orchester Elim Chan, conductor Alexander Vinogradov, bass Wiener Singverein
The writing of film and stage music accompanied Dmitri Shostakovich from the beginning of his career as a composer. His incidental music for »Hamlet« forms the prelude to further references to Hamlet, including those of Berlioz. Only "Tristia" – a work title by Berlioz that refers to Ovid – was written when the composer felt particularly connected to the poet in London in 1848. After all, like Ovid, he had been driven out of Rome by the unrest in his hometown of Paris and the shutdown of musical life. Under the motto "Sad Things", Berlioz published three works for orchestra and choir of different periods: the "Méditation religieuse", which ends with a melancholy solo horn, "La mort d'Ophélie" as a free paraphrase of Ophelia's death in the fourth act of Shakespeare's "Hamlet" and a deeply sad "Marche funèbre", which he composed as incidental music for the final scene of "Hamlet" – which, however, was never performed. With his "Symphony No. 13" in B flat minor in 1961, Dmitri Shostakovich created a musical memorial piece for the inhumane massacre of Babi Yar, in which more than 100,000 people – mainly Jews – were murdered by the National Socialists in the Kyiv Gorge (in the territory of today's Ukraine) during the Second World War. When the then almost 30-year-old Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko published a poem about this genocide, he deliberately set an example against forgetting. The attention of the world public was great, and it was also imperative for Shostakovich: "I can't not write it." Following the setting of "Babi Yar", he chose four more poems by Yevtushenko for his five-movement symphony with bass solo and chorus. A monumental work of 70 minutes, in which Soviet life is depicted. The second movement is called "Witz" with grotesquely ironic music, followed by "Im Laden", "Ängste" and "Eine Karriere" – a treatise on authority. The four gloomy movements lead to a brightly radiant conclusion. Marie-Therese Rudolph
Dmitri Dmitrievich Shostakovich: Hamlet: Film music op. 116 - Suite Hector Berlioz: Tristia (1849/1851) for choir and orchestra Dmitri Dmitrievich Shostakovich: Symphony No. 13 "Babi Yar" (1962) for bass solo, male choir and orchestra, Text author: Yevgeny Yevtushenko
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