TrulyGrace

Carnegie Mellon University Philharmonic

Last night I invited Jen and Brian to the Carnegie Mellon Philharmonic at Carnegie Music Hall in Oakland. Ronald Zollman, a Belgian, directed the group (along with the men's chorus for a piece by Schoenberg) in selections banned during the Nazi regime. It was the eve of Kristallnacht (as well as the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall), and the Snyders spoke, as well as a woman whose family escaped before the exterminations in her small town.

The program consisted of:
Memorial to Lidice (Bohuslav Martinu, a Czech)
Symphony No. 1 (Erwin Schulhoff, a Czech Jew of German descent)
~INTERMISSION~
Adagio for Strings (Samuel Barber, Irish-American and Pennsylvania-born)
A Survivor from Warsaw, Op. 46 (Arnold Schoenberg)
Totenfeir / "Burial Ceremony" (Gustav Mahler)

All in all, an evening of powerfully moving music. The familiar adagio by Barber (from the movie Platoon), and the Schoenberg piece featured the philharmonic with the men's chorus and Douglas Ahlstedt, an Associate Professor of Voice, singing and speaking. According to the program notes, the high point of the piece was the spontaneous prayer and singing that "[took] place during moments of spiritual anguish."

Labels: Carnegie, friends, music, school

posted by Grace @ 11/10/2009 05:59:00 PM