Can anyone who sees and recognizes injustice in his time still remain hopeful? The divergent pieces by Thomas Tallis and Bernd Alois Zimmermann, performed by the Swiss Youth Choir and the Bern Symphony Orchestra under Mario Venzago, refer to it in an urgent manner—bridging across centuries of time.

The injustice the preacher Salomon saw continues today. Bernd Alois Zimmermann referred to this when he tackled his final piece in 1970—by creating a counterpart to the cantata «Omnia tempus habent». Sure enough, Zimmermann used the German Biblical text, but juxtaposed it with the Grand Inquisitor’s speech in Dostoyevski’s «Brothers Karamazov». He requests the resurrected Jesus to forgo his right to interfere.

Zimmermann had the injustice of racial discrimination specifically in mind when he wrote his trumpet concerto in 1954. The piece is based on a famous Afro-American spiritual. Diverse conceptions: jazz and new music, appear in a fraternal way alongside one another.

One of the most powerful sound structures in musical history for eight spatially distributed groups of five voices appears between the motet for forty voices «Spem in alium nunquam habui» composed around 1570 by the Englishman Thomas Tallis. The text speaks of hope: «I have never placed my hope in any other than you, God of Israel, you who are angry and yet again become merciful and you who forgive all the sins of suffering man.»