GOVORIT MOSKVA! A critical radio concert on repression in music with Moritz Ernst and Detlef Heusinger

Introduction:

Detlef Heusinger (director and text selection)

Moscow 1938. The "dictatorship of the proletariat" has become a dictatorship of the Great Leader Stalin. In staged show trials, defendants are forced to recite their tortured confessions. Arrests are carried out according to quotas in order to have enough forced laborers in the GULags. No one can feel safe anymore, not even the German emigrants in the Hotel LUX in Moscow. They had fled from National Socialism and hoped to survive - even at the cost of defaming each other.

For two of the hotel's residents, an actor and a pianist, a propagandistic radio program could be their salvation. Based on the infamous PRAWDA article Chaos instead of music on Shostakovich's work, "self-criticism" is practiced and the degenerate formalist music is contrasted with the real-socialist music of Prokofiev and others.

Even if this radio program is fictitious, the text material used by Heinrich Mann, Lion Feuchtwanger and Johannes R. Becher is historically documented, in which the show trials are welcomed as a necessary act of purification. In their blindness, they bear witness to the dangers of state propaganda, from whichever side, and are therefore of burning topicality.

About the musical program:

Emanuel Melik-Aslanian (1915 - 2003): Parvaneh (Butterfly), 1954 (Armenian composer)

Igor Stravinsky (1882 - 1971): Danse Russe from Trois Mvt. de Pétrouchka
Arthur Lourié (1891 - 1966): Gigue (1927)

Sergej Rachmaninoff (1873 - 1943): Prélude in C sharp minor op.3 no.2

Stefania Turkevich (1898 - 1977): from Mountain Suite: Torrent - Forgotten Chapel (Ukrainian composer)

Modest Moussorgsky (1839 - 1881): The Tear

Dimitri Shostakovich (1906 -1975): Preludes op. 34 (excerpts)

Detlef Heusinger (born 1956): Piano work Il. Die Schritte der Nemesis (German premiere)

Text and director: Detlef Heusinger
Piano: Moritz Ernst
Speaker: David Heusinger

Short biographies:

Moritz Ernst, a student of Peter Feuchtwanger, is one of the most important pianists of his generation and has made a name for himself internationally, particularly with his performances of ostracized composers. He has also been the successful director of the Badenweiler Musiktage since 2024.

Detlef Heusinger, a student of Hans Werner Henze, is considered one of the most versatile composers of his generation. In addition to his compositional oeuvre, which spans all genres, he has also made a name for himself through his productions and conducting. He headed the SWR Experimentalstudio in Freiburg until 2022.

David Heusinger, between school and university, currently works as a web designer for a music label.

An event of the Zwetajewa Zentrum an der University campus Freiburg e. V. and the Badenweiler Musiktage with the kind support of SWR.

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