1. Academy Concert 24/25: Vladimir Jurowski

GMD Vladimir Jurowski opens the Academy Concert season with an explosive combination. Arnold Schönberg’s orchestral piece with narrator and male choir entitled A Survivor from Warsaw ranks among the composer’s profoundly direct and confessional artistic expressions. Concisely and succinctly, Schönberg portrays the suffering of Jewish prisoners in the Warsaw Ghetto, which at the end is given a moving utopian twist by a Hebrew prayer chant. It is followed directly by Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with its final chorus – a Herculean piece, which in its duration and dimensions, right through to the number of participants, breaks all previously existing boundaries. With its combination of instrumental music and singing, it is essentially a revolution, and above all an emphatic appeal for humanity. The words of Friedrich von Schiller in the final chorus are more relevant today than ever, as this finale is a vision of a happier future – in Aribert Reimann’s words, “an appeal, a yearning for brotherhood, for joy and rejoicing, for the Utopia of world peace, for a world without war and destruction”.

Arnold Schönberg
A Survivor from Warsaw (Ein Überlebender aus Warschau) op. 46

Ludwig van Beethoven
Symphonie Nr. 9 d-Moll op. 125