Young Euro Classic: Western Balkans Youth Orchestra

About the Event

In this highly‐anticipated concert, hear the mellifluous sounds of classical music by Grieg, Chopin, Shostakovich, Tansman and Druga at Berlin's treasured and world‐renowned Konzerthaus.

It is still in its infancy, but its professionalism and ambition cannot be denied: the Western Balkan Youth Orchestra, which was only founded in 2019, has already made its debut at the Young Euro Classic. The young musicians come from six non‐EU Western Balkan countries (from Serbia to Montenegro and Albania) and have put together a demanding programme. The first part is entirely devoted to the 19th century — Edvard Grieg's playful Holberg Suite and Frédéric Chopin's First Piano Concerto, with conductor Desar Sulejmani himself as soloist. After an interlude, we move on to the 20th and 21st centuries, beginning with an entirely new composition by the Albanian composer Gerti Droga. This is followed by a tribute to the Venetian Girolamo Frescobaldi by Alexandre Tansman, Russian by birth and French by choice. The haunting finale is Dmitri Shostakovich's Chamber Symphony, a moving work of mourning that the composer declared to be his own requiem when he wrote it in 1960.