Please note that there has been a change in the programme. Thank you for your understanding!

On 22 October, we are celebrating Franz Liszt’s birthday. Wagner, his close friend and rival is naturally connected to the birthday festivities. Liszt’s Psalm 137 is an unworthily forgotten memento of the crushed Hungarian revolution and war of indepence in 1848/49. It is a psalm evoking the Babilonian captivity written in German,  which - if looked at more closely - reveals Liszt’s feeling of resistance and self-identification as a Hungarian. Darius Milhaud’s music was composed much later and stands for a completely different world, while as far as its genre is concerned, it evokes Liszt’s symphonic poems. Milhaud’s ballet music imbued with the jazz of the turn of the century describes the creation of the Earth and the mental awakening of the beings of the world. The concert is closed with three excerpts from Tannhäuser, which demonstrates the tension between society and love, was one of Liszt’s favourites, and he might have identified with the protagonist of the opera.