The Cleveland Orchestra
Part of: Franz Welser-Möst and Fall of the Weimar Republic: Dancing on the Precipice
Performers
The Cleveland Orchestra
Franz Welser-Möst, Music Director and Conductor
Program
PROKOFIEV Symphony No. 2 in D Minor, Op. 40
WEBERN Symphony, Op. 21
PROKOFIEV Symphony No. 5
Event Duration
The printed program will last approximately two hours, including one 20-minute intermission.This Concert in Context
When Sergei Prokofiev completed his Symphony No. 2 in 1925 and Anton Webern his Symphony, Op. 21, three years later, the Weimar Republic was enjoying a period of much-needed stability and support. With the threat posed by hyperinflation long behind it and the signing of the 1925 Locarno Treaty that promised to restore good relations between Germany, France, and the United Kingdom after years of enmity and resentment, it looked as if democracy might have a future in Germany after all. Prokofiev himself lived for a time in Germany during his so-called “foreign period” before ultimately returning to the Soviet Union. It was there in the summer of 1944 that he completed his Symphony No. 5, which had its own mythical moment at its premiere in January 1945 at the Moscow Conservatory. When Prokofiev took the podium to the sound of artillery rumbling in the distance, the composer waited until the shelling dissipated before beginning the program. Only later did everyone realize that the gunfire had signaled the crossing of the Red Army over the river Vistula and into Germany, and the beginning of the end of World War II.
—Brendan Fay, author of Classical Music in Weimar Germany