“On a spring evening in Nuremberg, an orchestra of New York students gathered for a concert celebrating 80 years since the end of World War II. They also came with a peace mission.

Bard College’s The Orchestra Now, or TŌN, was invited by the Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra and made its first overseas trip for the concert on May 8. At the hour of Germany’s surrender in 1945, they performed a program by Felix Mendelssohn — whose music was banned under the Nazis because of his Jewish heritage — in Nuremberg’s Congress Hall, once the site of Hitler’s massive rallies.

The music closed with “Verleih uns Frieden,” or “Grant Us Peace,” a pleading choral piece using a prayer by Martin Luther that was also the concert’s title. (Nazi definitions notwithstanding, Mendelssohn was converted into Protestantism as a child and became a prominent composer of church music.)

For Leon Botstein, the president of Bard since 1975 and TŌN’s founder and conductor, the night was more than a commemoration.

“This concert is a sign that American citizens, although they freely elected our government, remain committed to the core beliefs that define a democracy,” Botstein said in his speech in German. “And that we, as people and artists, will prevail against autocracy and intolerance, that we will uphold our traditional alliance with Europe, which began 80 years ago, and that we will also defend Ukraine.”

He was interrupted by a swell of applause from the audience, which included Nuremberg’s mayor Markus König, former President of Germany Christian Wulff and the mayor of Kharkiv, Nuremberg’s sister city in Ukraine, Ihor Terekhov.” —Shira Li Bartov