On Palm Sunday, while the world is in a spiral of violence and the cultural world mourns the death of pianist Maurizio Pollini, Riccardo Muti conducted a concert in Rome in memory of the 335 victims of the SS massacre in the Ardeatine Caves. Franz Schubert’s “The Unfinished” was performed in the Sala Santa Cecilia of the Auditorium Parco della musica.
On the anniversary of the massacre, Muti decided to conduct Symphony No. 9 for the first time in Italy, alongside Schubert’s “The Unfinished”. The US composer William Schuman (1910-1992) dedicated this to the victims in the Ardeatine Caves after a visit to the memorial in the spring of 1967. “William Schuman’s 9th Symphony expresses the dramatic mood of a terrible tragedy incomprehensible to the human mind,” Muti said before the concert.
“When I was in Chicago and received the score written by Schuman, a Pulitzer Prize winner for music, I felt all the rebellion against this cruelty and wanted to perform the symphony immediately,” said Muti, who had already performed the work in 2019 on the occasion on the 75th anniversary of the Chicago massacre. Schuman, who came from a Jewish family, composed the symphony in the late 1960s after a visit to the memorial in Rome, which deeply impressed him.
“Schuman was an artist who wrote out of inner necessity. I don’t understand why his symphony has never been performed in Italy before. It is an emotional piece with strong moments in which the silent pain is clearly felt,” emphasized the maestro .
Muti sees similarities with the current situation. “This music traces a tragedy that repeats itself in a violent and unexpected way. The young musicians of the Cherubini Orchestra that I conduct here in Rome are bearers of hope. You hear, and they hear in the sounds, what the composer meant for them wanted to say the future,” explained Muti.
The conductor also remembered the death of piano legend Maurizio Pollini on Saturday. Muti and Pollini first performed with the Berlin Philharmonic in 1972. “Pollini was a person who devoted his life to music in a sublime way,” said Muti. He most recently performed with Pollini at the 2019 Ravenna Festival.
The massacre still casts a shadow over German-Italian relations today. It was ordered by leading Wehrmacht men in retaliation for an assassination attempt in which 33 members of the “Bozen” police regiment, part of the German occupation of Rome, were killed the day before. Adolf Hitler himself was involved in the decision. The bloodbath was carried out under the orders of the commander of the security police in Rome, Obersturmbannführer Herbert Kappler. The German Minister of State for Culture Claudia Roth also traveled to Rome to commemorate the 80th anniversary.
Muti will conduct a concert with his youth orchestra Cherubini at the Vienna Musikverein on June 12th, and he also has performances in Austria in August at the Salzburg Festival and the direction of the New Year’s Concert in 2025.
2024-03-25 08:45:22