125 Moments: 042 September 11, 2001

Daniel Barenboim and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra were in Lucerne, Switzerland, on September 11, 2001, scheduled to perform Mahler’s Seventh Symphony that evening at the Kultur- und Kongresszentrum only a few hours after the terrorist attacks in the United States.

At the beginning of the concert, Barenboim addressed the Lucerne audience: “The events of today are so shocking that no words can express what every one of us feels.  . . . When words are inadequate, music can express the feelings that we all have. I must express my special gratitude to my colleagues because I can only imagine what a group of American musicians — far away from home — are feeling right now. Several of my colleagues have asked that we begin the concert tonight with the American National Anthem, and that is what we will do, for tonight we are all of us Americans.”

Chicago Symphony Orchestra: 125 Moments was created to celebrate the ensemble’s 125th season in 2015-16 and gathered significant events, illustrated with imagery and artifacts from the collections of the Rosenthal Archives.

This article also appears here.