4. Symphony concert - HEROES 2.0

Martin Ohrwalder The Dance of the Cepheids
Arvo Pärt Swansong for orchestra
Maurice Ravel Boléro

Intermission

Philip Glass Symphony No. 4 Heroes, from the music of David Bowie and Brian Eno

It is the story of two lovers who find each other in the shadow of the Berlin Wall that David Bowie tells in the title track of his 1977 album Heroes, produced together with Brian Eno in what was then still divided Berlin. "We can be heroes, just for one day" - this line from the song became a motto for an entire Western generation that was finally able to experience the fall of the Iron Curtain. The American minimal music master Philip Glass, inspired by Bowie, followed up his 1st Symphony Low with the 4th Symphony Heroes, another album by the pop star. An uplifting orchestral tribute to heroes, unveiled by the Tiroler Symphonieorchester Innsbruck with Estonian conductor Elari Olts. Olts, who grew up in the Baltic States, which were still occupied by the Soviet Union, and experienced its transition into a free democratic world, has included Swansong by his Estonian compatriot Arvo Pärt, who celebrates his 90th birthday in 2025, in the program: A hymn in the typical Pärt style of "Holy Minimalism" to England's most influential theologian of the 19th century, Cardinal John Henry Newman, who was canonized by Pope Benedict XVI in 2010. Two dances are mixed into the heroic music: the Bolero by Ravel (in 2025 we celebrate his 150th birthday) as a concertante addition to the Landestheater dance production and The Dance of the Cephids, in which the Innsbruck composer and jazz musician Martin Ohrwalder illuminates the pulsation-changing group of stars in the northern sky in his musical cosmos.