The Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra (WSO) commemorates the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I with a weekend of concerts – Ravel, Britten, Shostakovich: In Remembrance, November 9 & 10 at the Centennial Concert Hall.

The program is curated to remember and celebrate the end of war. Renowned British violinist Tasmin Little performs the pacifist Benjamin Britten’s Violin Concerto. Maurice Ravel dedicated Tombeau de Couperin to six friends fallen in WWI.

Shostakovich’s Ninth Symphony was intended as a grand ode to Soviet victory in WWII. “Symphony No.8 (1943) became a profoundly tragic and epic depiction of massive conflict and the war’s consequences. With victory over Hitler’s Nazis in 1945, the resulting expectation for Russia’s greatest composer was to provide a suitably monumental symphony to glorify Stalin in no uncertain terms, regardless of the terrible losses of the Russian people,” writes James Manishen, the WSO’s Artistic Operations Associate. Instead, he delivered a delightful work reminiscent of Mozart, a rebuff to Soviet authoritarianism. “Shostakovich’s response was a far more compact symphony in the new Ninth – full of biting wit, economy of gesture and pointed barbs of anger under its surface.”

Tickets start at $25 and are available through the WSO Box Office: 204.949.3999 or wso.ca