2014-06-27 12:03:00

Concert marks prelude to WWI


(Vatican Radio) The event which marked the prelude to the First World War will be commemorated with a concert on Saturday in the Bosnian capital Sarajevo. On June 28th 1914 Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne was assassinated along with his wife in the city. His death set in motion a chain of events that eventually led to the Great War which was to last four long years.

The concert will be performed in front of the City Hall which is also home to the National Library and just a short distance from where the Archduke was killed. The building reopened in May 2014 after being destroyed during the Bosnian Serb conflict in 1992.

As this landmark building burned, firefighters and the people of Sarajevo rushed to save the wealth of literature housed inside. Despite their best efforts however, over 3 million books and countless artifacts were destroyed.

Saturday’s musical commemoration will feature the world famous Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Franz Welser-Most. The program will include works by Joseph Haydn, Maurice Ravel,(La valse, poème chorèographique pour orchestre), Alban Berg, and Franz Schubert.

Jeremy Dibble is Professor of Music at Durham University in the UK, he says the program represents a cross section of great canonical European work which includes two composers who lived through WWI.

“Ravel I think rather interestingly, a French composer who lived through the war, died in 1937, writing a piece about Vienna and about the waltz which I think... has a rather sort of darker underbelly.”

Also included in the program on Saturday is Johannes Brahms “Song of Destiny” for Choir and Orchestra which Professor Dibble says reflects the idea of life and transcendence, adding that when contemplating the “tragedy of the First World War, it has some really rather pointed meaning.”

It is estimated that 16 million people died and 20 million were wounded during World War I ranking it among the deadliest conflicts in human history. Listen to Lydia O’Kane’s interview with Professor Jeremy Dibble 








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