Sjostakovitsj 15 & Berio’s Sinfonia onder Petrenko

Unique collage

Mahler is not on the program, and yet his music resonates in this concert. The entire middle section of Berio's Sinfonia rests on the Scherzo from Mahler's Second Symphony . It serves as a framework to which Berio adds numerous elements: music from Bach to Stravinsky, and sung and spoken texts. In this way, Berio creates a unique collage, a whirlwind of quotations, alienating and fascinating. Furthermore, Sinfonia is influenced by impressions Berio gathered in New York at that time (1968).

Magical and serene

Three years later, Shostakovich wrote his Fifteenth Symphony . He, too, made use of music by fellow composers. Thus, he quoted from the works of Rossini and Wagner, among others, as well as from his own compositions. Quotations that he himself could not always explain. 'I just couldn't leave them out,' he is said to have remarked. It became his last symphony, without a grand finale, but with a magical and serene final movement.