Time’s Echo: An Exploration of Music, War and Memory

Time’s Echo Live is a festival of words and music exploring music’s power and promise as a medium of memory, and as a bridge to eras past. Led by author and critic Jeremy Eichler, it consists of four programs, each of which spotlight a single composer, opening up his life and art across the years of the Second World War and his unique approach to musical memory. Each program will also introduce new perspectives on the art of listening, and will feature a live performance by members of the Borromeo String Quartet and friends. Please join us for any combination of individual programs, or for a more-than-the-sum-of-its-parts journey across all four programs.

I. Air of Another Planet: Arnold Schoenberg and the Invention of Dissonance

(Saturday October 28th, 4-5.30pm)

Words: Decades before Schoenberg’s expulsion from Nazi Germany, the composer had described art as "the cry of distress uttered by those who experience firsthand the fate of mankind.” This program provides an introduction to the festival as a whole, while also recounting and exploring the meaning of Schoenberg’s extraordinary journey: from the son of a Jewish shoe manufacturer in Vienna to a Lutheran convert intent on revolutionizing German music, from a political activist determined to avert the great European catastrophe to the creator of the first major musical memorial to the Holocaust.

Music: Arnold Schoenberg, Verklärte Nacht (“Transfigured Night") for string sextet, Op. 4

Performed by :

Nicholas Kitchen, violin

Kristopher Tong, violin

Nicholas Cords, viola

Luther Warren, viola

Leland Ko, cello

Yeesun Kim, cello

II. In Memoriam: Richard Strauss at the End of German Music

(Saturday October 28th, 6-7.30pm)

Words: By his final decades Richard Strauss saw himself, not without reason, as the last mountain in the vast mountain range of German music stretching back to Bach. When Hitler came to power, Strauss chose to remain in the country and forge a partnership of opportunity with the Nazi party, until falling from its official graces in 1935. Our second program traces Strauss's morally fraught wartime journey and plumbs the mysterious depths of his extraordinary musical memorial, "Metamorphosen,” a response to the tragic collapse of German music by a composer who was both its final representative and an intimate witness to its downfall.

Music: Strauss, Metamorphosen, to be heard in a new arrangement for string sextet by Nicholas Kitchen.

Performed by:

Nicholas Kitchen, violin

Kristopher Tong, violin

Nicholas Cords, viola

Luther Warren, viola

Leland Ko, cello

Yeesun Kim, cello

III. Pacifist Amidst the Ruins: Benjamin Britten and the Angels of History

(Sunday October 29th, 4-5.30pm)

Britten was one of the century’s greatest musical pacifists, the consummate insider who saw himself as an outsider, and a man (in Yehudi Menuhin’s description) who possessed “a profound sense of community with the suffering world.” Our third program recounts Britten’s zero hour of the soul — his extraordinary recital tour of Germany’s Displaced Person camps in July 1945 — and unlocks the secrets of his celebrated “War Requiem.”

Music: Britten, Chacony from String Quartet No. 2.

Performed by:

Nicholas Kitchen, violin

Kristopher Tong, violin

Nicholas Cords, viola

Yeesun Kim, cello

IV. Heart, Mouth and Wound: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Memory of Forgetting

(Sunday October 29th, 6-7.30pm)

Through his life and through his art, Shostakovich bore powerful witness to the great tragedy of the Soviet utopian experiment. Our final program opens up both his astonishing wartime music and his courageous attempts to shatter his country’s own post-war tyranny of amnesia and silence. We conclude with a glimpse into his relationship with Britten - one of the century’s most beautiful musical friendships - and a visit to his Fourteenth Symphony, a meditation on themes of art, immortality, and farewell.

Music: Shostakovich, Piano Trio No. 2 in E-minor, Op. 67

Performed by:

Nicholas Kitchen, violin

Yeesun Kim, cello

Tae Kim, piano

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Goethe-Institut Boston, 170 Beacon Street, Boston, United States