Concert for the International Holocaust Remembrance Day by Ullmann, Frá (2023/2023), Teatro Auditorium Eugenio Montale, Genoa, Italy

Die weise von liebe und Tod des cornets Christoph Rilke – The Love and Death of Cornet Christopher Rilke – is a collection of twelve pieces from the homonym poem by Reiner Maria Rilke which Viktor Ullman composed in 1942. The composer selected twelve musical pieces out of the twenty-six forming Rilke’s first poem with the initial purpose of writing for voice and orchestra. Only the first piece was entirely orchestrated, while the following ones he passed on very precise indications. Written in 1899, Rilke’s poem was published in 1906 and then modified and printed in its new version in 1912. The poet recalls the episode about his ancestor Christoph, who died in Hungary in 1663, fighting in a Crusade against the Turkish army. In the poet’s vision, the eighteen-year-old Christoph is an idealist, proud of his role of ensign and bearer of the flag which he will die for on the battlefield. The main themes are desire, also in the form of nostalgia, and death. Despite its prose style, the writing develops almost its own metre and can be defined as poem (Also because of its versatility, such an work was particularly adapt to be transposed into music). Despite the fact that Cornets was written various years earlier and that Rilke’s poetics was not linked to any contingent event, the poem was greatly acclaimed during the years of World War I, when soldiersi would bring the book to the front and saw themselves in the protagonist and in the many nostalgic elements evoked around them.