Musical Sunday

“The Year 1905” – this is the subtitle of Shostakovich’s 11th Symphony: a programmatic work that revolves around ‘Bloody Sunday in St. Petersburg’, when Tsar Nicholas II had demonstrating workers shot at. It is great aural cinema, with a collage-like mixture of atmospheric painting, action and revolutionary songs. But is there perhaps more to it than that, namely a reference to the present day? After all, the composition was preceded by the popular uprising in Hungary in 1956, which was also suffocated in blood. If so, the Eleventh would be another example of ambiguity in Shostakovich’s symphonic oeuvre.

Two music enthusiasts dive deep into the works with the audience: Marcus Imbsweiler publishes novels, including stories about composers. Timo Jouko Herrmann is a composer and guest conductor of the Heidelberg Symphony Orchestra. He is one of the few internationally recognized experts on Salieri; his book Antonio Salieri. A Biography is considered a standard work. The first twenty Musical Sundays have been published as a book under the title Beziehungszauber. Classical masterpieces under the magnifying glass published by J. S. Klotz Verlagshaus.