As part of the Freedom Reigns Festival, Alex Agrest will perform Chamber Symphony, Opus 46a By Victor Ullmann. This outstanding work was composed in 1943 when Victor Ullmann was a prisoner of the Nazi concentration camp at Theresienstadt. Ullmann was deported to Auschwitz on October 16, 1944, in one of the last transports, where he died in the gas chamber.

Ullmann concludes in a profound expression of his and his colleagues' reserves of spiritual strength: "it must be emphasized that Theresienstadt has served to enhance, not to impede, my musical activities, that by no means did we sit weeping on the banks of the waters of Babylon, and that our endeavor with respect to arts was commensurate with our will to live. And I am convinced that all those who, in life and in art, were fighting to force form upon resisting matter, will agree with me."

"Ullmann’s music is his proclamation to the world and awakes us to unify in the fight for the peace and love. It is a greatest honor, mission and mitzvah to perform Ullmann’s music to day, when the world is straggling against all kind of evil, haters, racism, and all kind of discriminations." - Alex Agrest

String quartet by Dmitri Shostakovich was composed in three days and became one the most popular loved and performed pieces in the world. It was dedicated to the victims of the fascism. There were many speculations about what is really this piece written for, but it is very obvious that it is about life and death and the future of the world, and the expressive, emotional Jewish theme in the second movement connects it to the Holocaust.

Part of the Freedom Reigns Festival.