Music in Wartime: A Pearl Harbor Day Commemoration

On Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, "a date which will live in infamy," we commemorate the start of America's military involvement in World War II through music, poetry and imagery.

This program juxtaposes three musical responses to World War II.

"Music in Wartime: A Pearl Harbor Day Commemoration" marks the debut of the Cathedral's ensemble-in-residence, the PostClassical Ensemble.

Dmitri Shostakovich’s Piano Trio No. 2 (1944) is a cry of pain provoked by the barbaric Nazi Siege of Leningrad, in which half a million died. Arnold Schoenberg’s seething and exalted Ode to Napoleon (1942), composed in Los Angeles in response to Pearl Harbor by a grateful Jewish refugee, uses Lord Byron’s Ode to Napoleon to excoriate Hitler and exalt FDR. Hanns Eisler’s Hollywood Songbook (1938-1943), composed in Los Angeles responds to Hitler, the war and the composer’s California exile.

Program
Hanns Eisler: The Hollywood Songbook and Workers’ Songs
Dmitri Shostakovich: Piano Trio No. 2
Arnold Schoenberg: The Ode to Napoleon

Featuring
William Sharp, baritone
Alexander Shtarkman, piano
Members of PostClassical Ensemble, conducted by Angel Gil-Ordóñez
The Cathedral Choir, conducted by Michael McCarthy
Commentary by James Loeffler

Produced by Joseph Horowitz for PostClassical Ensemble

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