Triumph and Camouflage - Inner Emigration IV - Gstaad Festival Orchestra II
"The creative response of a Soviet artist to justified criticism" - Shostakovich subtitled his Fifth Symphony with both irony and resignation. The composition was written immediately after the scandal surrounding his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, which was dismissed by Pravda - presumably with Stalin's own pen - as "left-wing radical licentiousness" and accompanied by barely veiled threats: "They are playing with hermeticism - a game that could end badly." In the midst of the gloomy atmosphere of Stalinist purges, Shostakovich, whose life was now under real threat, felt compelled to withdraw his Fourth Symphony, which was stylistically very close to opera. Instead, he devoted himself to a more classical work in 1937: the Fifth Symphony. Beneath the conventional façade, however, lies a profound outcry against tyranny - a "triumph of art"... and thus also a triumph of life! Jaap van Zweden and the Gstaad Festival Orchestra counter these fifty intense minutes of deeply moving music with an almost youthful light-heartedness: that of the fourteen-year-old Mendelssohn, who was able to shine at the piano even at such a young age. On August 16, the brothers Lucas and Arthur Jussen, who are hardly any older and who, after two outstanding concerts, have already become indispensable for the festival and the audience, will shine!
Date and time
August 16, 2025, 19:30
Address
Festival tent Gstaad
Organizer
Gstaad Menuhin Festival & Academy
Works
Richard Strauss (1864-1949) "Don Juan", tone poem op. 20 20' Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) Concerto for 2 pianos in E major MWV O 5 30' --- Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) Symphony No. 5 in D minor op. 47
Management
Jaap van Zweden, Management
Soloists
Lucas & Arthur Jussen, piano
Admission price
CHF 170 / 145 / 100 / 70
Contact us
+41 33 748 81 82