Duisburg audiences will likely still remember Benjamin Reiners fondly: In March 2025, he conducted a special concert in the "Philharmonic Debate" series, in which composers of the past engage in creative exchange with each other through their works—a debate using musical means, so to speak. The Romantic composer Brahms now kicks off this program. Although he initially failed to win over his contemporaries with his monumental symphonic Piano Concerto No. 1, the work later established itself and became a lasting success. With Gerhard Oppitz , the concerto is in the best pianistic hands, as he is considered one of the leading Brahms interpreters.

Pianistic orchestral magic: Brahms & Pejačević

CityPalais

Join pianist Sonia Leong for an afternoon of powerful musical storytelling. From jazzy perpetual motion to lush romantic beauty, the program concludes with Tchaikovsky’s deeply personal exploration of fate that builds to one of classical music’s most triumphant finales. Feel destiny’s drama unfold through sound.

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Fantasy & Fate

Warren Atherton Auditorium

Chamber music concert with works by Dora Pejačević, Emilie Mayer and Rebecca Clarke as well as world premieres by the winners of the inter-university composition competition “Spiegelungen”: Tim Lugstein, Lluís Gual i Gasull and Hao Lin.

Reflections

Mozarteum University Salzburg

A timeless saga from northern lands, a book of fairy stories with a deliciously French twist, and an adventure beyond your imagination from Igor Stravinsky – a world of dark shadows, dancing demons and glittering colours. Sounds incredible? Just wait until you hear it live with conductor Emilia Hoving and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. That’s the wonder of a great orchestra in full flight; it can take you to extraordinary places. Today, along with pianist Alexandra Dariescu, we’ll take you further as we delve into the musical world of Croatian composer Dora Pejačević, a forgotten genius from the age of Mahler and Ravel. If you enjoy their music, you’ll love this sweeping, deliriously romantic showpiece from the sunset years of the Austro-Hungarian empire.

Stravinsky's The Firebird

Cadogan Hall 

Intensity, emotionality, captivating joy in playing, and a generous dose of curiosity and a desire for new things—that's what Trio Orelon exemplifies. In their innovative thematic programs, the three musicians focus particularly on the works of lesser-known female composers. Under the motto "Beethoven's Daughters," the ensemble combines these rarely performed pieces with well-known works by Ludwig van Beethoven. Thus, this evening, alongside Beethoven's "Archduke Trio," they will perform music by Lili Boulanger and Dora Pejačević.

YOUNG ELITE Trio Orelon

Schloss Schwiessel

Dora Pejačević (1885 - 1923) was not only a pianist and violinist, but also the first Croatian composer to write orchestral works. Due to her late romantic, harmonically and instrumentally sophisticated sound language, she is considered a representative of the fin de siècle on the threshold of modernity. Since her rediscovery, she has been the central figure in Croatian music history, a "trademark" with a perfume named after her, Dora sparkling wine and a documentary film about her life. On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of her death in 2023 at the latest, her orchestral works are now also anchored in the programs of German concert halls: above all her Symphony in F sharp major, which Arthur Nikisch put on the program of the Leipzig Gewandhaus after its great success in Dresden, and her Overture for large orchestra from 1919, which will be heard in this concert.

10th Symphony Concert

Staatstheater Braunschweig

"Laurel sounds, part two. And again, old and new, familiar and rediscovered, are mixed together. Instruments begin to sing, transforming into Mozart's Papageno, Konstanze and Tamino. We meet the American Charles Martin Loeffler, born in Berlin in 1861, whose compositions mainly contain traces of Debussy, Franck and Chausson, but also a little Eastern European folk music. We marvel at the late romantic reed songs of Wagner fan August Klughardt, in which a lot of Fauré can be heard. And we discover Dora Pejačević, daughter of a Croatian count and a Hungarian baroness: a composer who later lived mainly in Dresden and Munich and whose style is close to that of Rachmaninoff. Finally, we also get to know the cellist and composer Alfredo Piatti, who lived in London for a long time and for whom Mendelssohn - so it is said - wanted to write a cello concerto. This never happened; this was probably not due to Piatti, who only died in 1901 at the age of 79.

winner of the ARD Music Competition

Schwetzingen Castle

Hunting Hall

 Conductor Stefan Blunier has put together an exciting program full of discoveries and various references for his return to the Duisburg Philharmonic. At the end is Pyotr I. Tchaikovsky's darkly flowing "Symphony of Fate", which fits wonderfully with the magnificent overture by Dora Pejačević at the beginning, which also has a tragic undertone. The Croatian countess who composed was a real superstar during her lifetime, but was pushed out of the collective memory by music history. However, she is slowly emerging from oblivion, thanks in part to initiatives such as those of Stefan Blunier and the Duisburg Philharmonic. The program then includes one of Franz Liszt's rarely played symphonic poems. In it, the virtuoso piano composer deals with the ancient Orpheus myth, which also builds a content-related bridge to Manfred Trojahn's work, which will premiere in 2023. The name "Achéron" also comes from Greek mythology and refers to the river of suffering and pain into which the other rivers of the underworld flow. The concert is thus also a continuation of the orchestra's intensive engagement with the work of one of the most important living composers.

Excursion into the Underworld

Philharmonie Mercatorhalle

MSM Faculty Recital: Chloé Kiffer, violin with Linda Chesis, Jessica Meyer, Julia Lichten, and Alexandre Moutouzkine

Manhattan School of Music

Beethoven was drawn to characters, fictional or real, who dared to stand up against injustices. Egmont in Goethe's drama of the same name was one such fictional but clear role model for Beethoven. In the overture, he encapsulates the drama, from the slow introduction through tragedy to a triumphant conclusion. The orchestra is led by the young and increasingly renowned Czech conductor Jirí Rozen, making his debut with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra.

Bruch Violin Concerto No. 1

Stockholm City Hall

Beethoven was drawn to figures, fictional or real, who dared to stand up against injustices. Egmont in Goethe's drama of the same name was one such fictional but clearly influential figure for Beethoven. In the overture, he summarizes the drama, from the slow introduction through tragedy to a triumphant conclusion.

Beethoven and Pejacevic

Awarded ‘Trailblazer’ status by the Royal Philharmonic Society for their lockdown creativity and described by The Sunday Times as ‘classical music's most multitalented new power couple’, the duo presents two major sonatas alongside smaller pieces by the rediscovered genius of Dora Pejačević.

Elena Urioste violin; Tom Poster piano

Wigmore Hall

3rd Symphony Concert

Nikolaisaal

Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 in B minor is undoubtedly one of the most magnificent works of this genre. The opening cadenza with the famous D flat major melody, the powerful, rapid chords of the piano and the wide-ranging, blossoming strings is one of Tchaikovsky's best known - perhaps the best known - themes. Wonderful interplay between piano and orchestra, powerful crescendos, virtuoso cadences and dreamy, even subtle passages characterize this work, which ends in a spirited finale.

3rd Philharmonic Concert

Revolutions aren’t always noisy – and as the world around them broke up in war and turmoil, Dora Pejačević and Karol Szymanowski let their imaginations soar, creating beauty that still thrills and ravishes today. The young Strauss pictures eternity, and Richard Wagner writes a wordless poem to the love of his life: music so intimate that it almost feels as if we shouldn’t be listening.

Glowing Colours and Grand Passions

Barbican Centre

Glowing colours and grand passions

Original programming has become a hallmark of the Collective’s identity, one that has garnered the versatile ensemble highly positive reviews and a substantial following. Set amongst familiar works in a programme with an overall Eastern European/folk-influenced theme is a 1925 piece by the increasingly admired Croatian Dora Pejačević.

Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective

Following the Frankfurt concerts, the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra with Ivan Repušić will be appearing at the Beethovenfest Bonn. In addition to an overture by Dora Pejačević, the program includes the world premiere of a new work for violin, cello, piano and orchestra by the Catalan composer Ferran Cruixent, which was commissioned by the Beethovenfest, as well as Antonín Dvořák's 8th Symphony.

Beethovenfest Bonn

Theater Bonn Opera House

A Beethoven as one hardly knows him: The Triple Concerto is an artistic piece full of charm and esprit, it is irritatingly understated, gallant, delicate. And it needs three soloists who look after each other - because only in balance can the full feeling of happiness arise. So it makes sense to invite the Sitkovetsky Trio to play this solitary Beethoven. The piano trio, founded in 2007 by violinist Alexander Sitkovetsky, impresses with its sophistication in interplay, its outstanding playing culture - and its experience with Beethoven's sound world. The three musicians are currently recording all of Beethoven's trio works for CD. In addition to Beethoven, the program now includes Dvořák's 8th Symphony, the work with which the Bohemian broke away from his role model Brahms and which - not unlike the Triple Concerto - has an unusual weightlessness and poetry within it. The conductor is the Croatian Ivan Repušić, who is currently at home with the Munich Radio Orchestra, but who is also in the starting blocks as chief conductor of the Staatskapelle Weimar and general music director of the Leipzig Opera.

feeling of happiness

Bertramstraße 8

Majors & Minors: Music for strings and piano by Brahms, Mozart and Dora Pejačević

Chandler Center for the Arts

Anthony Bock presents a piano recital of a snapshot of classical music from around the western world during the 1920s. Enjoy works from Croatia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Student Degree Recital: Anthony Bock, Collaborative Piano DMA Performance Recital (pre-candidacy)

University of Maryland

River Rhapsodies IV

Clinton School of Public Service

From the hillsides of Transylvania, shepherds’ horns echo and resound. Gustav Mahler contemplates personal tragedy, then fights his way – through waltzes, storms and a heartfelt musical love letter – to life, hope and triumph. And Dora Pejačević dreams out loud, in a neglected, impassioned masterpiece haunted by the shadows of the Great War.

Oramo conducts Mahler 2023

Award-winning German pianist Martin Helmchen makes his Proms debut as soloist in Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto, a vast work full of mercurial mood swings and technical demands. The concerto’s late-Romantic spirit and generous scope find an echo in Dora Pejačević’s Symphony in F sharp minor, richly scored and resplendent with brass. Composed during the First World War, when Pejačević worked as a nurse, the work receives its Proms premiere by Sakari Oramo and the BBC Symphony Orchestra following their critically acclaimed recording.

Prom 40: Martin Helmchen plays Brahms

Royal Albert Hall

Drama right at the start of the season? But yes: the stage is there so that in concert or in theater we can experience in our minds and hearts what we (hopefully) don't have to go through in life. And so sometimes the darkest plays are the ones we love the most! We begin the season with a program that takes us from the wild, late-Romantic stormy landscape of Dora Pejacevic's Overture to Mozart's D minor Piano Concerto and the thrilling soundscapes of Béla Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra.

Drama Concert

John Storgårds and the BBC Philharmonic return to the Proms for Rachmaninov’s First Symphony. Dame Sarah Connolly joins them for songs by Alma Mahler-Werfel and Dora Pejačević.

Prom 33: Rachmaninov, Mahler-Werfel and Pejačević

The BBC National Orchestra of Wales and Jaime Martín present Holst’s epic suite The Planets alongside works by Grace Williams and Dora Pejačević.

Prom 32: Holst’s The Planets

Alma Mahler's Seven Songs immediately lead us into the world of the turn of the century: emotions between melancholy and hope, set to music with a deep, almost intimate expressiveness. In the arrangement for medium voice and orchestra, they unfold a sonic dimension that both touches and inspires. On the other hand, Antonín Dvořák's Symphony No. 9, known as "From the New World," is quite different. It bridges the gap between two continents and pours the impressions of a life in foreign America into grand symphonic arches. Longing sounds here like a distant memory, pulsating yet full of vastness. Dvořák's famous English horn theme, often referred to as the "Song of the Lonely Wanderer," captivates as much as the dynamic contrasts between drama and delicate lyricism. An evening that explores completely different soundscapes – and shows how diverse musical longing can sound.

From the New World

Palace of Culture

Rachmaninoff’s breathtakingly beautiful Second Piano Concerto and Dvořák’s Ninth Symphony – From the New World – are two of the most beloved works in the classical repertoire. Rachmaninoff’s concerto is filled with passion, longing and romance, but also serenity and peace. For the first time at Konserthuset Stockholm, we welcome the extraordinary Armenian-American pianist Sergei Babayan – a giant among giants.

Rachmaninov and Dvorák

In the opening chords of his Piano Concerto, Grieg informs the audience that something extraordinary is about to unfold. With the iconic descending chordal motif, the formidable pianist Michelle Cann seizes attention in an instant. But first, conductor Lina González-Granados sets the stage with Grieg’s famous Peer Gynt Suite and the stirring Overture in D Minor by Croatian composer Dora Pejačević.

Dora Pejačević

Events

Upcoming events

Feb 28 - Mar 1, 2026

From the New World · Dresdner Philharmonie

15 - 16 Apr, 2026

Rachmaninov and Dvorák · Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra

21 - 23 May, 2026

Grieg, Nordic Sun · Orchestre Métropolitain

Past events

28 - 29 Jan, 2026

Pianistic orchestral magic: Brahms & Pejačević · Duisburger Philharmoniker

Nov 16, 2025

Fantasy & Fate · Stockton Symphony

About

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