Subjective! Lecture series of András Batta - The World of Yesterday #1
Subjective! Lecture series of András Batta - The World of Yesterday #1
This lecture is held in Hungarian.
The World of Yesterday is the title of Stefan Zweig's poignant autobiography, written as a refugee in a foreign country in the darkest years of Europe, before he left the "world of yesterday" of his own free will in 1942, in the hopelessness of "today". "A European 'among the whites', he bade farewell as the final conclusion to the tragic fate of his generation. For good, but not for good. What remains is a legacy, a memory and a hope that gives strength in times of crisis in Europe, including today. Europe draws from itself, renewed by its unique spirit. Perhaps it is the immortal past that will lead us into the future. A web of great works can protect old Europe from disintegration and extinction. In this sense, his new Subjective series turns to the world of yesterday.
The notion of a 'golden age' is an illusion. Almost all periods in European music history can be called the golden age, while for a long time one age conscientiously forgot the other. The time for remembering came, not without precedent, at the turn of the 20th century and in the first two decades of the 20th century, when some great composers, mainly of German and French origin, felt that an era had come to an end, which history had shockingly confirmed in 1914 with the outbreak of the Great War. The main setting for this performance is the golden age of Vienna and Paris, in the light of the music of Richard Strauss, Gustav Mahler, Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel.
