Air Bridge

"Thank you America" -- this is the title of a tour undertaken by the German Youth Orchestra. The young musicians are saying "thank you" for tens of thousands of candy bars, although it wasn't even they who got the sweets, but their parents. 50 years ago, three years after the end of World War II, the American forces build the "Air Bridge" for West Berlin which had been sealed off by the Russians. For eleven months, they dropped candies and other food from airplanes. The first so-called raisin bombers took off in June of 1948, and on June 26, the Youth Orchestra will appear in an outdoor concert at the Gendarmen Markt in Berlin. Right now, the orchestra is touring the United States. On Saturday (May 2nd) they played in New York. Yesterday (May 3rd) they were in Washington, D.C., and tomorrow (June 5), they are playing at Harvard University in Boston. Their famous guest conductor in America is Kurt Masur, formerly conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus and now music director at the New York Philharmonic. Georg Hirsch attended the concert in Washington.

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