Riccardo Muti will conduct the Italian
première of American composer William Schuman's Symphony No. 9
'The Ardeatine Caves' at the Auditorium Parco della Musica in
Rome for the 80th anniversary of the WWII massacre on March 24.
''Whatever future my symphony may have, every time it is
performed, the audience will remember,'' said Schuman of the
piece composed following a 1967 visit to the site on Rome's
southern outskirts where on March 24, 1944, 335 Italians were
executed by Nazi officers in a reprisal for a partisan attack
that killed 33 German soldiers in central Rome on a street near
the Trevi Fountain.
In retaliation, for every one German killed, the army seized 10
Italians including civilians as well as numerous political
prisoners and Jews who were in custody, plus five more who were
also executed.
Both men and boys were executed and their bodies dumped in the
caves where the memorial is now located.
"In none of my previous symphonies have I used an extrinsic or
non-musical element," said the composer born into a Jewish
family in Manhattan in 1910 and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for
music in 1943 of his decision to link his Ninth Symphony to the
memory of the massacre.
"Frankly, there is no valid musical reason for this addition to
the title of the composition. The work does not attempt to
portray the event in a realistic manner and its effect on the
emotional climate of the work could have remained a private
matter," he continued.
"My reasons are therefore not musical, but philosophical. One
has to come to terms with the past to build the future, but in
this work I am an enemy of oblivion," said Schuman.
Sponsored by the Luigi Cherubini Youth Orchestra Foundation with
the patronage of the Ministry of Culture, the Municipality of
Rome and the Jewish Community of Rome, the free event will be
performed by the Cherubini Orchestra with instrumentalists from
the band of the Carabinieri military police corps.
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