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"Everything speaks when he sets his orchestra in motion," was the opinion of Ernst Ludwig Gerber in his "Historical-Biographical Lexicon of Musicians" in 1790, referring to the compositions of Joseph Haydn. The emotional center of the 44th Symphony is the Adagio, which is why it is referred to as "mournful." However, the main sections are very different: a passionate passage at the beginning and a finale with furious dynamics. This is perfectly complemented by the following piece by John Adams: "Frenzy" translates to "madness" – and this piece, which revolves around a melodic turn in 2023, also sounds manic. The composer wrote in a commentary that the title word captures the "overwhelming feeling" that arises when we look at the current world around us – especially how it presents itself to us in our daily dose of digital news and information. To conclude, we will play a masterpiece in which the movement of the listener – or rather, the viewer – is explicitly translated into sound: "Pictures at an Exhibition," a piece that Mussorgsky mentioned in 1874 during the creative process, saying that the "sounds and thoughts" seemed to come to him naturally. Between the ten musical paintings, he placed the popular "Promenade" melody – as if someone were moving from one painting to another in a gallery. The depiction of the Kiew gate with the festive bells at the end of the work was originally intended as a mythological-historical reference – but in the current geopolitical situation, it also stands for the resilience of the Ukrainian capital.
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