The Bach Festival Week Opening Concert – Feast and Famine will feature the Bach Festival Chorus and Kalamazoo Philharmonia partnering together to present a concert about two great historical injustices. William Walton's spectacular oratorio Belshazzar's Feast foretells doom for the decadent Belshazzar, and liberation for the Hebrew slaves in Babylonian captivity. This ancient tale is balanced by music which commemorates a more recent tragedy: the Ukrainian Holodomor of 1933, when millions of Ukrainians perished needlessly on Stalin's orders. Contemporary Ukrainian composer Yevhen Stankovych's Requiem for Those Who Died of Famine memorializes the tragedy's 85th anniversary.  This concert will be this work's U.S. premiere.