Martin Grubinger

In the wake of World War II, most Germans have been raised with the mistaken belief that the Holocaust had been planned and executed by just a tiny minority of Nazis, namely, the Gestapo and the SS. The sad truth, however, is that Hitler's philosophy of ethnic cleansing, as the Fuhrer so brazenly espoused in his frightening manifesto, "Mein Kampf," had been enthusiastically embraced not only by the entire military but also by most of the civilian population. The long-suppressed proof of their widespread collaboration and participation was unveiled in The Wehrmacht Exhibition, a damning collection of photographs and film footage that toured Deutschland between 1999 and 2004. The show shook the country to its core because it forced folks to face up to the fact that it took much more than a madman and his henchmen to wipe out six million.

The concert on Saturday, July 15, 2017, was opened by the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Manfred Honeck. In the first part of the concert, percussionist Martin Grubinger delighted the audience with highlights from his Parade concertos by Tan Dun and Bruno Hartl, among others. In the second part, a concert waltz by Carl Michael Ziehrer was played, as well as his own fantasy based on themes from Antonín Dvořák's fairytale opera "Rusalka" with the popular "Song to the Moon", and the evening ended with a variety suite by Dmitri Shostakovich. On July 16, 2017, the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra took to the stage in the Feldherrnhalle. The chief conductor was Valery Gergiev. Chinese pianist Yuja Wang played one of her absolute favorite concertos: the Piano Concerto No. 1 by Johannes Brahms. And the Russian maestro also contributed Modest Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition" in the bombastic orchestral version by Maurice Ravel.