Aviv Quartet concert at the Bobigny Deportation Station Memorial

On June 13, 2025, the Mémorial de la gare de déportation de Bobigny will host a concert by the Aviv Quartet, accompanied by the Mémorial's ambassadrices de la mémoire de la Shoah, combining remembrance and musical creation. The Aviv Quartet will perform Steve Reich's Different Trains and Beethoven's ^14th String Quartet, in a profound artistic and memorial dialogue.

Composed in 1988, Different Trains is directly rooted in the memory of the Holocaust. A landmark work of American minimalism, it combines a string quartet with a pre-recorded tape of train sounds, fragments of speeches and survivor testimonies. In its central movement, the work features the voices of survivors of the deportation, making palpable the tragic gap between the quite different trains a Jewish child might have taken in the USA or Europe in the 1940s. This work summons memory, raw emotion and active listening. As a counterpoint, Beethoven's ^14th Quartet - a profoundly meditative and humanistic work - invites us to meditate and experience a form of spiritual elevation.

The concert will also be marked by the presence and participation of the Memorial's ambassadors of the memory of the Shoah,^3rd grade red students from the Charles Péguy secondary school in Bobigny. Working with the Memorial since May 2024, these committed young people will accompany the artists at every stage of the event. They will welcome the public, guide a tour of the site prior to the concert, and introduce the two works by sharing the keys to understanding that link Different Trains and Beethoven's quartet. Finally, they will take part in the performance of Steve Reich's work, bringing their vision, voice and sensitivity to this profoundly memorable creation.