With a critic's ear, a scholar's erudition, and a novelist's eye for detail, Jeremy Eichler shows how four towering composers—Richard Strauss, Arnold Schoenberg, Dmitri Shostakovich, and Benjamin Britten—lived through the era of World War II and the Holocaust. Each composer transformed their experiences into moving, transcendent works of music, scores that echo lost time. Summoning the supporting testimony of writers, poets, philosophers, musicians, and everyday citizens, Eichler makes a passionate and revelatory case for the power of music as cultural memory, an art form uniquely capable of carrying forward meaning from the past.
Jeremy Eichler is joined in conversation by Emanuel Ax, Grammy-winning classical pianist, who will perform at the event. They will discuss how, by listening to history and learning to hear the resonances of what another era has written, heard, dreamed, hoped, and mourned, we can deepen how we think about the legacies of war, the presence of the past, and the renewed promise of art for our lives today. A book signing will follow with books available to purchase.
Time’s Echo is currently being translated into six languages and has been singled out by the UK’s Baillie Gifford Prize as one of the top 13 nonfiction books of the year.
This event is live in-person and livestream only, and a recording will not be available after. Doors open at 2:30 PM. The Museum is free with event attendance on Sundays until 5:00 PM with Jewish and Russian fare on offer from LOX Cafe. Currently on view: The Holocaust: What Hate Can Do, Survivors: Faces of Life After the Holocaust, and Andy Goldsworthy’s Garden of Stones.