Organization

Conductor

Andrey Boreyko

Orchestra

Aarhus Symfoniorkester

Sjostakovitj: Vidnesbyrden

Aarhus

Denmark

Musikhuset Aarhus

Symfonisk Sal

Sjostakovitj: Vidnesbyrden: Symphony No. 8 in C Minor, op. 65 Shostakovich

Public

Symphony No.8, Op.47

Approved

Shostakovich
The testimony
War plagues Europe again, so we open our ears and the concert hall to those who were there. Those whose voices and music have borne the suffering – for the rest of us, for the present, and for the future.
Shostakovich's Eighth Symphony is a war symphony – but a far truer description of war than the great heroic chronicles of which the world is so full. Shostakovich always wrote his contemporaries. In the eighth symphony, it is about two of the 20th century's most defining events: the Battle of Stalingrad and the nightmare of the Soviet dictatorship. His music is the story of what happens when the community turns against itself: the war is thus only a prism for a larger story about the collapse of a society.

The symphony is like a requiem; not only for those who died, but also for our dream of a better world. Unbearable - and at the same time an invaluable testimony to the loneliness of the individual in the twisted world of war and dictatorship. And (of course) completely incomparable music.

We are also bringing contemporary times – and the war – into the concert hall this evening. We have invited a number of war veterans who talk about their experiences. The war is (again) part of our reality: an unavoidable truth that we neither can nor should suppress. After the break, we hear Shostakovich's 8th Symphony in its entirety.

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Cooperation with Aarhus Municipality's Veterans Adviser

dansk

Sjostakovitj: Vidnesbyrden by Shostakovich, From (2024/2024), Conductor Andrey Boreyko, Musikhuset Aarhus, Aarhus, Denmark

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