The successful Entartete Musik Festival comes back to Mechelen from 21 to 24 March 2024. Thanks to Kazerne Dossin and city festival Construct Europe, and with the warm support of Klara radio, Mechelen will be the stage for four days of poignant banned musical testimonies – from Nazi Germany but also from stalinist Russia.
Music by Prokofiev, Wellesz, Ben-Haim, Gal, Shostakovich, Weinberg will be performed by top ensembles and soloists such as Oxalys and the Mechelen Chamber Orchestra. With a special spot for Valentin Silvestrov, perhaps the best-known contemporary Ukrainian composer.
Moreover, this second edition of Entartete Musik also presents a special book, illustrated by Koen Broucke, in which various authors and experts deal with this delicate matter in different ways.
Concert March 23 2024 : 20u – Cultuurcentrum Mechelen : between aesthetics and pragmatics
“A Soviet artist’s response to justified criticism” was the official subtitle Dmitri Shostakovich gave to his fifth symphony. The unparalleled success of this masterpiece would lead to his complete rehabilitation. Or not? Combined with his second piano concerto, which Shostakovich wrote as a present for son Maxim’s nineteenth birthday, and the unsurpassed first concerto for flute and strings by Miesczyslaw Weinberg, a Russian entartete Jewish composer and friend of Shostakovich, this will be a grand orchestral evening.
Performed by the Mechelsen Chamber Orchestra (conducted by Piet Van Bockstal) and soloists Toon Fret (flute) and Trevor Sakias (piano).