Gewandhausorchester in New York

For the members of Leipzig’s Gewandhausorchester, this season’s six guest performances in the United States are a highlight of an already sensational year of music touring. The concert on November 9th in New York’s Avery Fisher Hall is especially profound, commemorating pivotal events in German history and the tradition-steeped ensemble’s role in the peaceful revolution that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall 25 years ago.

Leipzig, the city in eastern Germany that is home to the world-acclaimed Gewandhausorchester, was the center of peaceful opposition to the Communist East German regime in the 1980s. Kurt Masur, the orchestra’s music director at the time, was a key figure who famously spoke out for “sensible, meaningful dialogue” between anti-government protestors and regime authorities, helping to avert a violent crackdown when political tensions were at their highest. Backed by his musicians, the orchestra’s Gewandhaus building became a central forum for public discussion over the course of October 1989 until the first fateful chips flew from the Berlin Wall on November 9, ultimately raising the Iron Curtain that divided East and West during the Cold War.

The date, however, also recalls a darker side of German history, marking the murderous events of the “Crystal Night” pogrom against the Jewish population in Nazi Germany in 1938. Two years earlier, also on November 9th, Leipzig Nazis destroyed a statue of Jewish composer Felix Mendelssohn that stood in front of the Gewandhaus. Mendelssohn served as music director of the Gewandhausorchester from 1835 until his death. The memorial was rebuilt in 2008 and is now located outside of Leipzig’s St. Thomas' Church, where the musicians regularly perform with the St. Thomas Boys Choir.

In New York, the venerated orchestra pays musical tribute to the light and shadows of contemporary German history with a program of Mendelssohn and Beethoven on November 10th for the climactic conclusion of their “peaceful revolution” U.S. tour. The penultimate evening, the historic 9th of November, features performances of Bach’s Fourth Orchestral Suite and Anton Bruckner’s popular Symphony No. 7 by the same orchestra that premiered it in 1884.

As the orchestra’s Official Logistics Partner, DHL is proud to assist the touring cultural ambassadors of Leipzig as they perform in the Lincoln Center’s Great Performers series, where their musical message of peace and understanding not only marks history, but also memorably transcends it.

Performers:

Gewandhausorchester

Riccardo Chailly, conductor

Nikolaj Znaider, violin

Performances:

November 9, 2014 – New York – Avery Fisher Hall

Johann Sebastian Bach: Orchestral Suite No. 4 in D major

Anton Bruckner: Symphony No. 7 in E major, WAB 107

November 10, 2014 – New York – Avery Fisher Hall

Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy: The Hebrides (Fingal’s Cave) - Overture, op. 26, MWV P 7

Ludwig van Beethoven: Violin Concerto D major, op. 61

Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy: Symphony No. 5 in D minor, op. 107, “Reformation Symphony”