Almost no «unknown» victim of the Shoah has become as famous as Anne Frank. Her moving diary entries continue to give a human face to the anonymous mass of more than six million murdered people. Michael Tilson Thomas has set excerpts from it for speaker and orchestra. Ruth Brauer-Kvam is the narrator in the Austrian premiere. Complementing this is one of the world's most famous pieces of funereal music, Samuel Barber's «Adagio for Strings». Originally the slow movement of a string quartet, the composer wrote it on the eve of the Second World War in St. Wolfgang in the Salzkammergut. Lawrence Foster and the Tonkunstler balance the poignant first half with Ludwig van Beethoven's Eighth, his most humorous symphony, which plays ambiguously with tradition and expectations.