Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra by Silvestrov, Chopin, Beethoven, Brahms, De la (2022/2022), Dirijor Keri-Lynn Wilson, Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg, Germany

MUSIC FOR FREEDOM In response to the devastating war in their homeland, a group of Ukrainian musicians formed the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra – a unique ensemble consisting of members of top-class European and Ukrainian orchestras, among them refugees from the concert and opera orchestras in Kyiv, Lviv, Kharkiv and Odessa. With a multi-week tour of Europe and the USA, including a visit to Hamburg, they aim to »defend Ukrainian art and its courageous artists«. One of the orchestra’s founders is the Canadian-Ukrainian conductor Keri-Lynn Wilson, who also leads the orchestra. They are joined by two of Ukraine’s best-known musicians: the soprano Liudmyla Monastyrska and the pianist Anna Fedorova. The Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra’s mission is also reflected in the concert programme, above all in the music of the composer Valentin Silvestrov, who was persecuted in times of the Soviet Union for his non-conformist art and who fled to Berlin before the outbreak of war this year. The Polish piano master Frédéric Chopin also went into exile, and never returned to his homeland, which was under the oppression of the Russian tsars. Beethoven’s only opera »Fidelio« is also about injustice, violence and the triumph of freedom. The concert comes to a close with Brahms’s mature Fourth Symphony, whose final movement is based on a theme by Johann Sebastian Bach: »For Thee, O Lord, I long«.