Festival overture 1948

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The Festival Overture in 1948 for large orchestra of Ottmar Gerster was born in 1948 as a commission by the cultural department of the executive committee of Thuringia the SED for the centenary commemoration of the 1848 revolution and at the same time as a paean to the development of socialism in the Soviet occupation zone , which the following year establishing the East lead should. Musically, the emergence of socialism is traced by Gerster using various musical quotations from battle songs . He begins his festival overture with the Internationale . According to Marx's materialist dialectic , however, no socialist state can arise unless the preceding social forms are passed through. Gerster quotes the Marseillaise as a symbol of the upheaval from feudal to capitalist society . Other songs cited include Brothers, Sun, Freedom, and the Russian funeral chant Immortal Sacrifice .

The festival overture was premiered at the 1st SED culture conference from May 5th to 7th, 1948 in the Berlin State Opera . The performance lasts around seven to ten minutes.

Instrumentation: 2 flutes , 2 oboes , 2 clarinets , 2 bassoons , 4 horns , 2 trumpets , 3 trombones , tuba , timpani , percussion , strings .

Recordings / sound carriers

  • Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Leipzig, conductor: Hermann Abendroth. Hastedt 1997 (1949)
  • Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Leipzig, conductor: Horst Stein. Berlin Classics 1995 (1959)

literature

  • Norbert Albrecht: Make music speak. Aspects of narration in early GDR music. In: Eberhard Lämmert (Hrsg.): The narrative dimension: a commonality of the arts . Akademie Verlag, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-05-003304-5 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
  • Hannelore Gärtner: The arts in the German Democratic Republic: from its history in three decades. Henschelverlag, Berlin 1979 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
  • Bettina Hinterthür: Notes according to plan: the music publishers in the Soviet occupation zone / GDR - censorship system, central planned economy and German-German relations until the beginning of the 1960s (= contributions to company history. Volume 23). Franz Steiner, Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 3-515-08837-7 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
  • Anne-Kristin Schmidt: Music as a tool of indoctrination: using the example of Ottmar Gerster's 1948 festival overture and Ernst Hermann Meyer's Mansfeld oratorio. Are, Mainz 2009, ISBN 978-3-924522-26-1 .
  • Daniel zur Weihen: Composing in the GDR: Institutions, organizations and the first generation of composers until 1961 (= From the middle of Germany. Volume 29). Böhlau, Cologne 1999, ISBN 3-412-09399-8 ( limited preview in the Google book search).