DSO Chamber Concert: “Heroines – Rosa Parks: ‘You must never be fearful ...’”
5:00 p.m.
Chamber Music Series by the German Symphony Orchestra Berlin during the 2026/2027 concert season.
At Villa Elisabeth, their stories, their work, and their legacy will come to life over the course of three evenings—through narratives by female authors and experts, and through musical compositions that reflect the protagonists’ lives and the times in which they lived.
The second concert on December 6, 2026, will feature Rosa Parks (1913–2005), whose courageous act of everyday protest against racism and unequal treatment in 1955 became a defining moment in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement. Her refusal to give up her seat on a bus for a white person during the era of segregation set in motion a movement that ultimately led to the abolition of the racist “Jim Crow laws.” Her story is told by musicologist, journalist, and musician Neneh Sowe
.* The title comes from the Black composer Henry Thacker Burleigh and is retained out of respect for the historical work, even though it is outdated and discriminatory.
Program:
Florence Price
—Excerpts from works for piano quintet and string quartet
Henry Thacker Burleigh
Arrangements of “Negro Spirituals,” adapted for string quartet*
Nokuthula Endo Ngwenyama
: Elegy for Piano Quartet
Performers:
Byol Kang, violin
; Clemens Linder, violin
; Annemarie Moorcroft, viola
; Mischa Meyer, cello
; Benjamin Hochman, piano
Neneh Sowe, reading
Organizer:
Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin in cooperation with Kultur Büro Elisabeth
Photo © Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America