A concert in the Chapel to remember the great riots of the history of the 20th century

 
 
Culture
(19/10/2021)

The European Observatory on Memories (EUROM) of the UB Solidarity Foundation and the Councillorship of Democratic Memory of the Barcelona City Council are organizing the concert “Music and politics” to remember the great riots of the history of the 20th century. The activity, which is free, will take place on Thursday, October 21, at 6:30 p.m., in the Aula Capella (Chapel) of the UB (Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes, 585). Previous registration is required since there is limited room capacity.

 

 
 
Culture
19/10/2021

The European Observatory on Memories (EUROM) of the UB Solidarity Foundation and the Councillorship of Democratic Memory of the Barcelona City Council are organizing the concert “Music and politics” to remember the great riots of the history of the 20th century. The activity, which is free, will take place on Thursday, October 21, at 6:30 p.m., in the Aula Capella (Chapel) of the UB (Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes, 585). Previous registration is required since there is limited room capacity.

 

Brought by Forum Voix Étouffées and Russian mezzo-soprano Maria Ostroukhova, and under the supervision of Amaury du Closel, the recital will pay special attention to the events of the Russian Revolution, the Shoah, the civil rights movement in the United States and the Prague Spring.

The concert will bring back pieces that are largely based on cabaret and jazz, and which were denounced by Nazism and Stalinism as “degenerate”. Thus, the program will give a broad space to an iconic composer of the interwar period, Hanns Eisler, who created the concept of “combat music” to oppose Nazism, and who is still totally absent from both concert life and recordings.

The repertoire includes pieces by composers who criticized human rights abuses, both during the Cold War and in the racial-segregation American society. An example is O King, by the Italian Luciano Berio, written in memory of Martin Luther King during the year of his assassination.

Finally, a third part of the concert will be based on research on the Nazismʼs elimination of Jewish composers and on the memory of the deportation and the Shoah. Pieces by Czech composer Emil Burian, and by two contemporary composers who did not live through these events, but who worked to disseminate them: Israeli Lior Navok and French composer Amaury du Closel. Especially for the occasion, Closel has composed Stolpersteine, a piece on the memorial stones with which the artist Gunter Demnig remembers the victims of the Holocaust.

Further information