Ladies and Gentlemen,
we regret to inform you that the Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg concert scheduled for 14 May 2024 has been cancelled due to reasons beyond the Warsaw Philharmonic.

Tickets purchased for the cancelled concerts are refundable.
If you have purchased through bilety24.pl – you will receive a message with information about the possibility of refund.
Tickets purchased at Warsaw Philharmonic ticket offices can be returned on the spot. We invite you to the box office from ul. Sienkiewicza from Monday to Friday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 3 p.m. to 7 p.m.

This evening’s performance by the Strasbourg Philharmonic Orchestra will start with a morning song – an alborada, the opposite of a serenade performed at dusk. Alborada del gracioso comes from Maurice Ravel’s piano cycle Miroirs, each of the movements of which is dedicated to a different member of the avant-garde group of artists dubbed ‘Les Apaches’, who were active in Paris at the beginning of the twentieth century. The pianistically demanding Alborada, brimming with energy and Spanish rhythms, was colourfully orchestrated years later by the composer himself for Serge Diaghilev’s famous Ballets Russes. Vitality and rich rhythms, albeit in a completely different guise, also distinguish the Violin Concerto in D minor by Aram Khachaturian, composed in 1940. This work draws inspiration from Caucasian folklore, which the Armenian composer admired since childhood. As Khachaturian declared: ‘’The lively melodies of Armenian, Azeri and Georgian songs and dances shaped my musical awareness and informed my artistic personality’. Hector Berlioz’s monumental Symphonie fantastique, meanwhile, was inspired by the composer’s fascination with the Irish actress Harriet Smithson. The world’s first ever programme symphony soon became an icon of Romantic musical narration and the epitome of orchestral painting.

Bartłomiej Gembicki