Just as relevant today as in times gone by: Shakespeare’s love story about Romeo and Juliet, the »star-crossed lovers« who grew up in estranged families, is catapulted into the present day in Leonard Bernstein’s »West Side Story«. The seductive beauty of Julius Conus’s Violin Concerto is brought to life by concertmaster Adrian Iliescu. We also hear Britten’s »An American Ouverture«, a kind of look across the prairie at the yearnings of the common man, and Samuel Barber’s best-loved composition, his »Adagio for Strings« of 1983, which became a moving elegy for those who fell in the Second World War, and later for the victims of the attacks on 11 September 2001 as well. Eivind Gullberg Jensen, making his third guest appearance with the Symphoniker Hamburg, guides us through these memorable works. read less