Abschlusskonzert »Freedom! 250 Jahre Declaration of Independence«

250 years of independence, 250 years of freedom! On 4 July 1776, the 13 British colonies declared their independence and thus founded the USA: a major step towards freedom and self-determination. What does this freedom look like today, a quarter of a millennium later? Perhaps in The Unanswered Question, Charles Ives was contemplating the contradictory nature of man’s impatience and desperation to find quick answers to profound questions. At any rate, this is how Leonard Bernstein interpreted the structure and musical development of his compatriot’s work. In his own work, the piano concerto-like Second Symphony The Age of Anxiety, inspired by the poem of the same name by W. H. Auden, Bernstein is also concerned with the great questions of humanity, which four lonely strangers ask themselves in a New York bar. The American pianist Claire Huangci gets to the bottom of these questions with technical finesse and emotional depth. We get a different perspective on America with Antonín Dvořák’s Ninth Symphony From the New World, for which he found world-famous melodies and tonal colours during his employment at the National Conservatory of Music in New York; all completely in the spirit of the hopeful idea of freedom of the then still young state.