Of course, in any case – art is political, depending on the height of the artists’ ideas and positions. It’s also the music. Beethoven’s “Battle of Vittoria” and Schönberg’s “Survivor from Warsaw” or Stravinsky’s “Sacre” may have been just the hottest incendiary speeches against war and destruction. The fact that the Sixth Symphony by the Russian Lera Auerbach, who was born in Chelyabinsk, Siberia in 1973 and emigrated to the USA at the age of eighteen, was commissioned by the International Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem Yad Vashem speaks volumes about the political urgency of its composition. Joana Mallwitz and her concert hall orchestra plus soloists and the Kaunas State Choir now provided profound confirmation. “Vessels of Light” is the name of the symphony, and such “vessels of light” carry a dedication that musically deepens the deed of a Japanese man in the middle of the Second World War – the rescue of Jewish refugees.