London, Prague, Mariupol – once upon a time, these names could have been placed one by one on a traveler’s map, in a note with vacation plans, or a photo album.

Nowadays, we often recall them in a different context – they are cities that help, shelter, support, or wait for us to return. For Ukraine, Mariupol is a city of unrelenting pain and broken dreams and abandoned homes. Enemy aggression has destroyed everything that love has touched here. Dedicated by Zoltan Almashi, the work “City of Mary” tells about a city that defended itself to the last, in which there was less fear than courage and despair than hope.

The concert will continue with one of the best classical instrumental serenades – Serenade by English composer Edward Elgar, which has become not only a landmark work in the composer’s oeuvre but also one of the gems of British music and a work by Ralph Vaughan Williams, the founder of the English musical renaissance of the twentieth century. The five variations on “Dives and Lazarus” for harp and string orchestra have a mysterious history. This uniquely British work, in which the famous folk song is set to a dream, was first performed with great success not in his native Britain but in the legendary American Carnegie Hall.

In the best traditions of orchestral evenings, the concert will end with hope and bright moods, presented by one of the best instrumental serenades in the history of music – Antonin Dvořák’s Serenade for Strings in E major.

Artists:

• Academic Chamber Orchestra “Lviv Virtuosos”
• Parviz Yahyavi, conductor (Austria)

Program:

• Zoltan Almashi. “Mariia’s City”
• Edward Elgar. “Serenade” for Strings in E minor, Op. 20
• Ralph Vaughan Williams. Five Variations on “Dives and Lazarus” for harp and string orchestra
• Antonin Dvořák. “Serenade” for Strings in E major, Op. 2