
Performers
Programme
Accompanying programme
Concert introduction ‘before the museum’ with Klaus Albert Bauer
2025 marks the 50th anniversary of Dmitri Shostakovich's death: the ‘last symphonist’ died in Moscow in August 1975. Four years earlier, he had completed and premièred the last of his 15 symphonies. Already suffering from a serious illness, Shostakovich here marks the end of his symphonic oeuvre and at the same time looks back on his rich life as a composer. He quotes from his own works as well as those of others, and does so in a remarkable stylistic variety that echoes both Rossini's William Tell and Wagner's Götterdämmerung. This is abysmal music that juxtaposes sarcasm with mortal grief, and showy parading with spherical sound magic.
Who would be more qualified to bring this 15th symphony to life than Michael Sanderling? He got to know the great symphonist in the last years of his life, when Shostakovich was a welcome guest in Sanderling's parents' house in East Berlin.
The Russian programme of the concert will be complemented by Tchaikovsky's popular violin concerto, which will enable a reunion with Sergey Khachatryan - the great violinist who was born in Yerevan, Armenia, grew up in the Frankfurt area and began his international career from here.
(Frankfurter Museums-Gesellschaft e.V.)