It's a darned interesting piece with some lovely, nostalgic moments and some quite exciting moments. The original is quite incredible, so it was a lot of fun to work with it and get to play it.

Thank you! :)

Thank you! It was a lot of fun to play. Michiru's piece is really lovely. Simple, honest, heartfelt stuff.

Thank you!

Thank you! :)

No, but that's a good question. Shostakovich 13 is sometimes called Babi Yar, though that's not official. But maybe that's not what you meant anyway. If you mean the picture, it's a cemetary at a gulag outside Abez in roughly 1950. It's not really related to the music, but some theories like to suggest the symphony subtly comments on the Soviet repression surrounding Stalinism, which seems germane just at the moment. And the gulag in question was a part of Stalin's camp system.

@@tcsomo Thank you for your answer. I really meant Babi Yar but I did not know the number of the symfonie. I once saw Babi Yar once on Czechoslovak TV sung by a Slovak bass. It must have been around May 5 which for the Czechs also is Liberation Day. When I heard the music I felt the horror CS. meant to express. When I saw it, that was a time of hope. Now there is a war in Europe [again]. Not only in Europe.

@@Fahrid2, I'm going to change hats for a moment, since this is a personal connection, but I'm usually the person behind TCSOMO around here, and it was me as replied to you. My mom's side of the family is Slovak, and we still have some cousins in Bratislava. Sadly, the language disappeared from my direct family with my grandfather's generation, but I'd love to hear that Slovak bass, if you remember who it was. And yes, the horribleness of the present situation is why I chose that picture. My grandfather quite literally wept when the war started. He had pictures of a castle in Crimea on his wall. He'd fought in WWII only to see the rise of the iron curtain cutting him off from his relations still in Slovakia. He lived to see the reopening of Eastern Europe, and Slovak independence. He traveled to visit his relatives and even helped a cousin to move to the US. (So we still have some native Slovak speakers here, just . . . not me or my immediate family.) And he traveled through Ukraine and really loved it. And now this. He traveled to Israel and surrounding countries often too, so I'm almost glad he's not around to see that part. It feels as if so much that so many fought and died for before us is falling apart because of a dangerous mixture of greed and stupidity. It makes me want to weep. I was a little hesitant to post this recording, since I'm not completely satisfied with my own performance in it. (We're just a bunch of amateurs tackling a really, really complicated piece.) But you make me glad I did. It's . . . sorrowful stuff. But sometimes it's good to weep. Sometimes that's the only way to stay human.

Thank you Jason! The pianist, Andreas Boelcke, is a good friend of mine. (He played one of my own pieces on the same bill.)