The Music of Remembrance with Jeremy Eichler

Four pieces of music written in the years after World War II – Strauss’s Metamorphosen, Schoenberg’s A Survivor from Warsaw, Britten’s War Requiem, and Shostakovich’s 13th Symphony, ‘Babi Yar’  – paint a complicated picture of how European composers memorialised war in Jeremy Eichler’s new book Time’s Echo. Jeremy joins Andy on the show to trace the connections and conflicts in the ways that a German, a Jewish Austrian in exile, an Englishman, and a Russian looked back at the war(s) and the Holocaust.

Time’s Echo: The Second World War, the Holocaust, and the Music of Remembrance by Jeremy Eichler is published by Faber.

Music heard in the show:

Title: War Requiem, Op. 66Composer: Benjamin Britten, text by Wilfred OwenArtists: Peter Pears (tenor), Heather Harper (soprano), Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (baritone), Coventry Festival Choir, Boys of Holy Trinity Leamington and Stratford, John Cooper (organ), City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Melos Ensemble, Meredith Davies and Benjamin Britten (conductors)Album: Britten War Requiem (recorded live at Conventry Cathedral, May 1962)Label: Testament SBT 1490

Title: MetamorphosenComposer: Richard StraussArtists: Berlin Philharmonic, Wilhelm Furtwängler (conductor)Album: Wilhelm Furtwängler: An Anniversary TributeLabel: Deutsche Grammophon 477 006-2

Title: A Survivor from Warsaw, Op. 46Composer: Arnold SchoenbergArtists: Günter Reich (narrator), BBC Singers, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Pierre Boulez (conductor)Album: Boulez - SchoenbergLabel: Masterworks G010003768085J

Title: Symphony No. 13 in B flat minor, Op. 113, ‘Babi Yar’; i. Babi YarComposer: Dmitri ShostakovichArtists: Arthur Eisen (bass), Male Group of Republican Russian Academic Choir Capella, Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra, Kirill Kondrashin (conductor)Album: Shostakovich Complete SymphoniesLabel: Melodiya RCID18056928

Technical production by Bethany Stewart on Gadigal Land

The Music Show is produced on Gadigal and Gundungurra Land