A special concert experience awaits the audience on 19 and 20 June at the Teatro Arriaga in Bilbao. Dmitri Shostakovich’s 14th Symphony, completed in 1969, will be brought to the stage by director Calixto Bieito.
Shostakovich set to music eleven poems by Federico García Lorca, Guillaume Apollinaire, Wilhelm Küchelbecker and Rainer Maria Rilke, all of which deal with death. Unlike, for example, Benjamin Britten – whom he admired – in his War Requiem, Shostakovich finds no peaceful aspects in death. He himself said: “Death awaits each and every one of us. I can see nothing good in the fact that our lives end this way, and that is what I want to convey in this work.”
The Bilbao Orkestra Sinfonikoa, conducted by Alejo Pérez, will perform the work alongside soprano Annette Dasch and baritone Leigh Melrose; the symphony is complemented by interludes featuring the Leioa Kantika Korala choir, integrated into the production.
Teatro Arriaga
