Tabachnik, Pogorelich & Brussels Philharmonic: Schumann

About the Event

Hear the appeal for freedom in one of the incarnations of the overture to Fidelio, Beethoven’s sole opera. Written in Vienna in 1805 during Napoleon’s occupation of the city, the opera only saw three performances before French censors forced the composer to rework it.

Michel Tabachnik -- a composer as well as the conductor of this evening's performance -- speaks of another struggle for liberty in his composition The Book of Job, which will receive its premiere at this concert. According to Tabachnik, the work emphasizes “Job’s moral conflict while being tested by Satan. Even in the worst torments, Job never renounced his God.”

The Schumann Concerto could be read as a metaphor for conflict resolution: at first positioned in opposition to the soloist, the orchestra eventually resolves into “a peaceful sound.”

Schoenberg himself wrote the text for one of his last works, A Survivor from Warsaw (1947), a sort of interior monologue of a survivor witnessing the horrors of Nazi cruelty. The end of the score is devastatingly moving: as the Jews are being numbered off for the gas chambers, they find the strength to burst into a final prayer, “Shema Israel”.

This concert is part of the War and Peace Concert Series I: October 8‐12.