Strauss, de Falla, Bruch and Gershwin in Zagreb

Dimitri Kitaenko will join again the Zagreb Philharmonic on 23 and 24 February in one very international program. The concerts start with the suite Le bourgeois gentilhomme, which is, like many other works by Richard Strauss, for decades part of Maestro Kitaenko’s repertoire. This work is followed in the first concert by the second suite from Manuel de Falla’s El Sombrero de tres picos after the homonymous novel by Pedro Antonio Alarcón. Originally, de Falla wanted to draw an opera from the book, then a pantomime, and finally it became a ballet from which there are two suites. The ballet was premiered by Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in a set by Pablo Picasso, under the direction of Ernest Ansermet. The concert will end with a suite from Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, arranged by Robert Bennett.
In the second evening, de Falla’s ballet music is replaced by Max Bruch’s First Violin Concerto with, as soloist, Sidonija Lebar, concertmaster of the Zagreb Philharmonic.