Shostakovich. Symphony No. 13. Babi Yar
On November 6, 2023, a multimedia concert took place at MTS Live Hall as part of the cultural and educational project “Babi Yar” - “Shostakovich. Symphony No. 13. Babi Yar.
Babi Yar are painfully familiar words to everyone who faced the grief of the Great Patriotic War. This tragedy cannot be erased from the memory of anyone who has ever heard anything about the Holocaust. The catastrophe that our country faced in those years was colossal in terms of the scale of losses, including the extermination of not only the Jewish people, but also a huge number of civilians of different nationalities. Many literary, poetic and musical works were created on the theme of the tragedy. One of the most striking and significant examples is the poem by Yevgeny Yevtushenko with the same name - “Babi Yar”. The work is permeated with pain and grief, it moves the hearts of all people.
Equally significant was Dmitry Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 13 to Yevtushenko’s poem, written by the composer after reading that very poem, and also dedicated to the tragedy. It was that very symphony that sounded at the multimedia concert "Babi Yar" performed by the State Symphony Orchestra "New Russia" under the direction of People's Artist of the USSR Yuri Bashmet and three choirs - the Moscow Male Jewish Chapel, the State Academic Choir of Russia named after A. A. Yurlov and the State Academic Choir Russian choir named after A. Sveshnikov. The bass part was performed by the soloist of the Mariinsky Theater and guest soloist of the Bolshoi Theater of Russia Mikhail Petrenko. The expanded composition of the choir included 80 people, which had never been done before. The departure from the canon is marked by a tribute to the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Kyiv by the Red Army. The performance is supplemented by multimedia footage from the chronicle and a demonstration of a video with the reading of the poem. Famous cultural figures were invited to film videos, including A. Ya. Rosenbaum, L. A. Dolina, L. S. Kanevsky, E. G. Vitorgan, A. I. Merzlikin, E. Sh. Margulis, A. E. Kravchenko, I. M. Butman, D. V. Guberniev, G. V. Khazanov. The winners of the poetry competition also took part in the concert. Young poets performed on the same stage with famous cultural figures and read new works dedicated to the tragedy.
The concert was directed by Hans-Joachim Frei, who presented his original concept of the evening using multimedia technologies, a combination of different musical genres and other non-standard approaches.
The project was implemented with the support of the Presidential Fund for Cultural Initiatives together with the Igor Sandler Foundation for Support of Gifted Children and Youth.