Kochanovsky & Shostakovich

DR Symphony Orchestra

Grief plays a supporting role in this particular concert, which opens with American composer Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings -- a work whose painful yearning but at the same time defiant spirit America has sought in its darkest moments, including after 9/11.

The DR Symphony Orchestra's own solo cellist Soo-Kyong Hong is the soloist in South Korean composer Donghoon Shin's cello concerto Nachtergebung. The work, premiered in 2022 at the Berliner Filharmornien, draws its inspiration from the poetry of Georg Trakl and depicts the struggle of the human soul against the mania and cruelty of modernity.

Shostakovich explored the darkness of his own soul in his last symphony -- an autobiographical work, created from his hospital bed, that attempts to tie together the threads of one of the twentieth century's great creative lives. The symphony ultimately follows his own journey through trauma and grief toward possible solace. A concert that might soothe and give peace to the turmoil of the world for a while.