Foreign Affairs
Related: About this forumAt G-20, Beethoven Sends a Mixed Message to Trump.
HAMBURG, Germany Littered streets were lined by police officers outside the Elbphilharmonie concert hall here on Friday evening after a concert put on for world leaders attending the Group of 20 summit meeting.
Inside the security bubble: Beethoven. As the conferences host, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany had corralled the participating leaders for a performance of his Ninth Symphony, with its choral Ode to Joy finale invoking a utopian world in which all men become brothers. According to a government spokesman, the piece represented a hymn to humanity, peace and international understanding.
Inside the glittering new waterfront hall, President Trump lightly bobbed his head along to the boisterous scherzo. Next to him, President Emmanuel Macron of France leaned forward, on the edge of his seat. Canadas first couple snuggled close, holding hands. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who arrived late and slipped into an aisle seat, sat perfectly still, arms crossed.
Symphonies were, strangely enough, something of a recurring theme of Mr. Trumps European trip. During a speech in Warsaw on Thursday, Mr. Trump said, We write symphonies, as he listed the qualities that distinguished the we of the Western world (in implied contrast to a threatening them). In the concert on Friday, Ms. Merkel seemed to be answering him, using the Ninth to make the point that symphonies are about openness.'>>>
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/09/arts/music/at-g-20-beethoven-sends-a-mixed-message-to-trump.html?
pangaia
(24,324 posts)NDR Philharmonie Orchester, Philharmoniker Hamburg, Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchester
I'm guessing the NDR band...
elleng
(130,895 posts)with an all-German quartet of soloists. (There wasnt, for example, the sprinkling of musicians from around the world that the New York Philharmonics outgoing music director, Alan Gilbert, included in a recent Concert for Unity performance of a Mahler symphony.) For all its invocations of a global brotherhood, Fridays performance was also a display of German cultural pride not so different from the ceremonial sword dance with which Mr. Trump was honored during a recent visit to Saudi Arabia.
But in this election year in Germany, Ms. Merkels decision to put Beethoven at the center of the conference may also resonate with some of her own voters. Since her last victory at the polls, in 2013, she has stunned some of her supporters with her decision to open the country to hundreds of thousands of refugees.'
pangaia
(24,324 posts)Actually, I would have preferred to hear Mahler 2. 😍
On edit.. maybe 1812 or Shostakovich 7 would have been more appropriate.
🤣
elleng
(130,895 posts)1812 might have wakened trump???
pangaia
(24,324 posts)Do you know it?
elleng
(130,895 posts)Got my attention.
pangaia
(24,324 posts)It 2as written during the siege of Leningrad.
There is a great book,,,,LENINGRAD SIEGE AND SYMPHONY...
elleng
(130,895 posts)(Germans not bad either, compose-wise.)
pangaia
(24,324 posts)Napoleon tried it.....Hitler tried it....
God I love St Petersburg.....😍
I have heard concerts in the St Petersburg Philharmonie where the 7th was played during the siege...had and have friends in the St Petersburg Phil.
Although it was the Leningrad Radio Orchestra, the ones who were still alive and half starved, that played it in 1942.
elleng
(130,895 posts)pangaia
(24,324 posts)I saw an operatic version of THE IDIOT there at the exact moment trump was being sworn in 🤣
Hope you get to go.....
It is just a beautiful city...