The cause of human rights in Russia will be celebrated by a live concert  “To Russia with Love” in Berlin today. The event includes a classical music concert and an NGO information forum with a panel discussion on the situation with regard to human rights and civil society in Russia.

The live concert can be viewed live via this link http://liveweb.arte.tv/de/video/To_Russia_With_Love/,
or below, starting at 7pm in London, 8pm in Berlin, 10pm in Moscow, and 2pm in New York.

Gidon Kremer, a renowned violinist who initiated the event, said in his letter to The Guardian newspaper:

“Over the past decade the death toll and list of dubiously convicted people in Russia has grown exponentially. They include not only journalists and human rights activists, but business people, lawyers and musicians. The names of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev, Sergei Magnitsky (the lawyer who died in prison), Pussy Riot members Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alekhina are known worldwide. These names have become symbols of resistance to arbitrary power and unjust jurisprudence.”

Kremer’s interview with Russian radio station Radio Liberty.

The date of the event is not accidental, as October 7 marks the seventh anniversary of the death of Anna Politkovskaya, a Russian human rights journalist and outspoken government critic who was murdered in October 2006.

Politkovskaya addressed international readers in a letter discovered after her death:

“I am not writing about all the ‘benefits’ of my chosen path – about the poisoning, arrests, threats and promises to murder me… I think that these are minor annoyances. The most important is to have a chance to continue with my main purpose – to describe life and to admit daily visitors in the editorial office. They have nowhere else to go with their troubles – the authorities have turned their backs on them because what happened to them doesn’t fit into the Kremlin’s ideological concept. That is why their stories cannot appear just anywhere, or regularly – only in our newspaper Novaya Gazeta.

So what have I done that makes me so vile? I just wrote about what I witnessed. Nothing more.”

The letter will be read as part of the concert program. The full version of Politkovskaya’s letter in Russian is available here. An excerpt from Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s closing statement in the Khamovnichesky District Court in November 2010 will be read by German actor Sebastian Koch. The full statement in multiple languages is available here.

The program (Berlin Philharmonic, Chamber Music Hall)

Poem reading
Herta Müller, laureate of the Nobel Prize for Literature

Mieczyslaw Weinberg
Sinfonietta number 2, Op. 74 , Part 3: Adagio
Orchestra “Kremerata Baltica”

Johann Sebastian Bach
Suite for cello solo number 2 in D Minor BWV 1008 Part 2: Allemande
Nicholas Altshtedt

Sofia Gubaidulina
“Seven Last Words of Christ, not the Cross” for cello, accordion and strings, Part 3: “… Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise”
Nicholas Altshtedt , Elsbeth Moser , the orchestra ” Kremerata Baltica”

Arvo Pärt
“Estonian Lullaby” for choir and string orchestra
Children’s Choir “Shchedrik” orchestra “Kremerata Baltica” , Nikoloz Rachveli (conductor)

Mikhail Khodorkovsky
Excerpts from the closing speech at Moscow’s Khamovnichesky District Court (November 2, 2010)
Sebastian Koch, actor

Giya Kancheli
“Angels of sorrow” – dedicated to the 50th anniversary of Mikhail Khodorkovsky
Gidon Kremer, Giedre Dirvanauskayte, a children’s choir “Shchedrik” orchestra “Kremerata Baltica”, Nikoloz Rachveli (conductor)

Sergei Rachmaninoff , Fritz Kreisler
«Prayer» for violin and piano

Anna Politkovskaya
So what have I done that makes me so vile? 
Martina Gedeck, actress

Sergei Prokofiev
Piano Sonata № 7, Op. 83, Part 3: Precipitato
Khatia Buniatishvili

Pyotr Tchaikovsky
Lensky’s aria from the opera “Eugene Onegin” (a variation of Guy Braunstein for Flute and Piano)
Emmanuel Pahud, Khatia Buniatishvili

Dmitri Shostakovich
Concerto for Piano and String Orchestra number 1, op.35 (the soloist trumpet), Part 4: Allegro con brio
Martha Argerich, Sergei Nakariakov, the orchestra “Kremerata Baltica”

Leonid Desjatnikov
Music from the film “Target”, Part 1: Vivaldi, January, Part 3: Changes, Part 5: Foxtrot
Gidon Kremer, Martha Argerich, Sergei Nakariakov, the orchestra “Kremerata Baltica”