The highly talented Moravian composer Gideon Klein (1919 -1945) was one of the key players in the cultural life that existed in the midst of terror in the Theresienstadt concentration camp. There he composed, among other works, the „Partita for Strings“ before he perished in January 1945 in a subcamp of Auschwitz under unexplained circumstances. His small body of work was saved.

Samuel Barber, born in Pennsylvania in 1910, also caught the attention of those around him early on as being highly musical and was fortunately able to develop his talent with self-confidence: „I write what I feel. I am not an insecure composer,“ he said and did not change his Violin Concerto op. 14 when the commissioner and artist did not like it. He chose another soloist and waived the rest of the fee. In the USA, it has been particularly popular since its premiere in 1941 - with us, soloist Ning Feng presents the emotional, very accessible work in all its romantic melodic richness, which quite uniquely does not follow any precedent.

Afterwards, we stay in the USA with the Konzerthausorchester and conductor Joshua Weilerstein, because Antonín Dvořák's Ninth „From the New World“ is on the programme, the slow movement of which the cor anglais introduces so heartrendingly. The Bohemian composer wrote it during a long transatlantic stay. Its premiere in Carnegie Hall in 1893 brought the work huge success, which never ceased.