The program of the concert on April 28 with the famous works by Richard Wagner:
- Overture to the opera Parsifal (1882)
- Overture to the opera Tannhäuser (1843 – 1845)
- Vorspiel und Liebestod from the opera Tristan und Isolde (1857 – 1859)
- Overture to the opera Lohengrin (1845 – 1848)
- Overture to the opera Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1868)
Richard Wagner is one of the most influential composers in the history of music, a cultural hero, myth, and symbol, whose work and views remain the subject of frenzied debate. Orchestral music belongs to his most indisputable creative achievements: the technical perfection and expressiveness of his instrumentation were recognized even by skeptically minded critics. Wagner was a reformer of the art of orchestration, as well as the founder of conducting practice in its modern form.
The program of the concert on April 27 with the famous works by Pyotr Tchaikovsky:
- Francesca da Rimini, Symphonic Fantasy after Dante, Op. 32 (1876)
- Capriccio Italien on folk tunes for orchestra, Op. 45 (1880)
- Romeo and Juliet, Overture-Fantasy after Shakespeare, TH 42 (1869–1880)
The symphonic evening with the musicAeterna Orchestra is dedicated to Italy depicted in Tchaikovsky’s compositions. The most cosmopolitan of the Russian composers of the 19th century, Tchaikovsky traveled extensively throughout his life in Europe, by 1880 having managed to visit the Italian Peninsula three times. The very nature of his talent is more “Italian” than “German”: Tchaikovsky appreciates open-hearted emotions and expressiveness of melody, saturates abstract symphonic genres with theatrical drama, and values success with the public higher than the approval of critics. The concert program encompasses three of his opuses related to Italy musically or in terms of the plot.