LAHAV SHANI & FRIENDS

For his second Festival concert, Lahav Shani moves from the conductor’s podium to the piano. Together with members of the Munich Philharmonic and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, he presents a unique evening of intimate chamber music. The program is dedicated to artists who were persecuted and found a refuge in music, or whose works were banned for ideological reasons – and where could this find a more appropriate place than the crypt of the Frauenkirche, itself a symbol of peace and tolerance! The pianist and composer Ilse Fromm-Michaels was silenced due to her husband’s Jewish family background. In her »Musica larga« of 1944, her voice is heard in a moving Adagio. At the Theresienstadt (Terezín) ghetto, the Austrian composer Viktor Ullmann composed his String Quartet No. 3, shot through with sad beauty. And Dmitri Shostakovich’s only Piano Quintet tells of the inner struggle between persecution and conformism, written four years after the devastating article in »Pravda« which would change the composer’s life forever.

EVGENIA PINKOVSKY RATUSH Violin (Israel Philharmonic Orchestra)
SIMON FORDHAM Violin (Münchner Philharmoniker)
DMITRI RATUSH Viola (Israel Philharmonic Orchestra)
THOMAS RUGE cello (Münchner Philharmoniker)
ALEXANDRA GRUBER Clarinet (Münchner Philharmoniker)

LAHAV SHANI PIANO

Ilse Fromm-Michaels »Musica larga« for Clarinet und String Quartet
Viktor Ullmann String Quartet No. 3 Op. 46
Dmitri Shostakovich Piano Quintet in G-minor Op. 57