More than 33,000 Jews were brutally murdered by Nazi German forces in the ravine of Babyn Jar, on the current territory of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, in 1941. It was the largest single massacre in Europe to have occurred during the Second World War. Countless victims have not been identified until this day. In commemoration, Ukrainian Yevhen Stankovych composed his Kaddish Requiem for spoken voices, tenor, bass, chorus and orchestra. It premiered at the National Opera in Kyiv in 2016. The performance of the work at the Free Republic of Vienna with the Kyiv Symphony Orchestra under renowned Ukrainian conductor Oksana Lyniv draws a line from the past into the present and shows that remembrance is working on the future.

Kaddish Requiem will be preceded by the following premiere by Evgeni Orkin. Paul Celan’s poem Todesfuge is one of the most touching works of literature. In this work, the poet describes the atmosphere in an extermination camp in a manner that draws on the structure of the fugue in music. In his concert of the same name for violin, spoken voice and orchestra, the composer Evgeni Orkin symbolically blends time, art and history. The orchestra itself thus becomes a kind of 1940s ‘transmitter’. The two soloists’ musical interjections and citations meld into a narrative that has still not lost its currency.

Todesfuge for violin, spoken word and orchestra
After the poem of the same name by Paul Celan

Violin Andrii Murza
Speaker Philip Kelz