MSU ensembles to memorialize Holocaust victims

East Lansing – Two Michigan State University ensembles are performing music in memory of the Holocaust.

The MSU Symphony Orchestra and Choral Ensembles perform at 8 p.m. Saturday in East Lansing’s Wharton Center and 2 p.m. Sunday in Detroit’s Orchestra Hall.

The concerts feature performances of Dimitri Shostakovich’s “Symphony No. 13” entitled “Babi Yar,” which memorializes the massacre of Ukrainian Jews by Nazi forces in 1941. In the two years following, many more Jews and others would also be killed at Babi Yar, a ravine near Kiev.

Also on the program are selections from “I Never Saw Another Butterfly” by Charles Davidson. The piece is a setting of poems by Jewish children who died in the Holocaust.

Before the concerts, lectures are planned about the Holocaust’s artistic reaction and remembrance.