“To be, or not to be?”
Symphony concert with Erina Yashima
 

Program:

Dmitri D. Schostakowitsch [1906–1975]
Film music for Hamlet op. 116 (excerpts)
Hamlet, drama music op. 32 (excerpts)

 

Sergei S. Prokofjew [1891–1953]
Hamlet, incidental music op. 77 (excerpts)

 

Edward Elgar [1857–1938]
Falstaff, Symphonic Study in C Minor op. 68

 

Shakespeare's resonant language is eminently suitable for setting to music, so it is hardly surprising that the great names of the musical world have literally pounced on his comedies, tragedies, sonnets, and poems.

Prokofiev and Shostakovich, two of the most important Russian composers of the 20th century, each created special Hamlet settings: in 1964, Shostakovich provided a monumental soundtrack to the film adaptation by Russian director Grigori M. Kozintsev, which is still considered one of the most haunting Hamlet adaptations today; In 1938, Prokofiev created a suspenseful drama score. Both film and drama are based on the Hamlet adaptation by poet Boris Pasternak, later made famous by his novel Doctor Zhivago. From Shostakovich and Prokofiev, Erina Yashima and the orchestra of the Komische Oper Berlin turn to Edward Elgar’s tone poem Falstaff, a richly toned, colourful monument to the fun-loving knight from Shakespeare’s Henry IV.