Adagio in A Minor

This entire project began because one man responded to hatred and violence with a piece of music. Vedran Smailovic, the principal cellist for the Sarajevo Opera Orchestra, came from a family whose tradition was to bring music to people in unusual and unexpected places. No place could have been more unexpected than the epicenter of a bombing attack. The piece he chose, Albinoni’s Adagio in G minor, was the lone piece of music recovered from the National Museum after the firebombing of Dresden. It was an adagio never completed by the composer (it was amended later by an Albinoni scholar). Smailovic chose to play the original, unfinished version during is 22 day vigil in Sarajevo’s Vase Miskina back in 1992.
This piece is for him.