ALL IN FIVE

Attentive readers of Péter Nádas find themselves seeing both the world and themselves differently than they did before – and there is no greater impact any work of art or body of works can achieve.

One thing we know for certain about the 21st century is that it will be when the survivors of the Holocaust take their last breath. Every single one of them. Slowly but surely, they are leaving us to our own devices. “Do we want to forget what happened, as if it were a bad dream, or do we want to accept the events as human civilization’s greatest trauma?” the author Péter Esterházy once asked.

Attendind a performance of Messiah is always a thrilling experience, but it is especially so when Handel’s work – which has become a national classic in England – is performed by a dedicated ensemble like the legendary German flagship of the international early-music scene: the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, now with over 44 years of history behind it. The storied chamber orchestra will perform with one of the world’s finest mixed choirs, the RIAS Kammerchor, which also hails from Berlin and was founded in the years immediately following the Second World War.