Jaap van Zweden Launching MUSIC OF CONSCIENCE!

Jaap van Zweden and the New York Philharmonic together are set to launch Music of Conscience next week.

The first program features two composers’ responses to tyranny: Shostakovich’s Chamber Symphony – derived from his String Quartet No. 8, written in Dresden 15 years after it was razed in an Allied bombing and inscribed “in memory of victims of fascism and war” – and Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony – dedicated to Napoleon until he crowned himself Emperor, whereupon Beethoven denounced him as “a tyrant … who will think himself superior to all men.”