Name: Saint-Saëns/Bartók/Enescu
Start: 2026-04-26T17:30:00
Location: Teatro Politeama Garibaldi

Louis Lortie

Gaetano d'Espinosa

Orchestra Sinfonica Siciliana

Composed in 1807 for Heinrich Joseph von Collin's tragedy Coriolanus , the overture was the only piece from an original project that included composing an entire cycle of incidental music for this play. Like other Beethoven overtures, this one immediately found a permanent place in the symphonic repertoire, regardless of the performance of the play for which it was conceived. The overture was most likely performed only at the tragedy's premiere, on April 24, 1807, although its music had already been appreciated a month earlier at a concert held at Prince Lobkowitz's palace under Beethoven himself, during which the Fourth Symphony and the Fourth Piano Concerto were also performed . This overture reveals the tragic grandeur of Coriolanus, a character whose historical reality is uncertain. After conquering the Volscian city of Corioli, the hero was exiled by the Romans for his despotic rule. Taking refuge with the Volscians, he decided to take revenge by leading the enemy army against his homeland. As he approached the gates of the city, Coriolanus was joined by his mother Veturia and his wife Volumnia, carrying their two young children in their arms. The two women begged him not to raise arms against Rome. Heeding their fervent prayer, the leader then decided to retreat, but was executed by the Volscians on charges of treason. The entire overture, which opens on a tragic C minor with three celebrated crescendos of string unisons that pave the way for the full orchestral explosion, thrives on the contrast between Coriolanus's fighting spirit, effectively captured in the first theme, and his wife Volumnia's imploring spirit, equally powerfully expressed in the strongly lyrical second theme. The coda is very evocative, where, after the resumption of the introductory lines, the theme slowly dissolves, almost as if to foreshadow the protagonist's tragic end.

Eroi E Passioni

Politeama Garibaldi - Palermo

Incontri Musicali Del Terzo Tipo - "foss Late Night"

Composed between 1805 and 1806, during a particularly happy period for Beethoven, who was experiencing an intense and significant romance with Josephine Brunswick, the Fourth Piano Concerto , with the lyrical nature of its themes, seems to faithfully capture the composer's joy. The Concerto was first performed privately in the home of Prince Lobkowitz in March 1807, and in public on 22 December 1808 at the Theater an der Wien, within the famous Academy where the composer also presented his Fifth and Sixth Symphonies . Composer Johann Friedrich Reichardt left us a very detailed account of that evening in a letter:

“We sat there from half past six until half past ten in the freezing cold, and we learned that even beautiful things can get boring. Poor Beethoven, who could have earned his first and only profit of the year from this concert, had had difficulties and disagreements in organizing it. […] The singers and orchestra were made up of very heterogeneous elements. It had not even been possible to obtain a dress rehearsal of all the pieces, full of very difficult passages. You will be amazed at all that this most fertile genius and tireless worker accomplished during these four hours. First a Pastoral Symphony or memories of country life, full of lively pictures and images. 

Parabola Romantica

Convinced by the successes he had achieved at the Société Nationale de Musique with his Violin Sonata and Quartet in C minor that chamber music suited him particularly well, in 1880 Fauré considered writing a sonata for cello and piano, starting, as he often did, with the second movement. Performed for the first time on June 21, 1880, at Saint-Saëns's house, this piece received a warm reception, which, however, was not sufficient to encourage Fauré to complete the sonata. In 1883, the composer therefore published this single movement, which shares the key of C minor with the preceding quartet, under the title Élégie . The work's immediate popularity prompted conductor Édouard Colonne to ask Fauré, in 1895, to compose a version for cello and orchestra. It was first performed in Paris at the Société Nationale de Musique on April 26, 1901, with Pablo Casals as soloist. It is a piece of intense lyricism, in which the cello, supported by repeated chords from the orchestra, creates a kind of funereal melody. In the central section, however, a softer and more passionate theme emerges, building to an expressive climax before fading away in the reprise of the opening melody.

La Vita D'eroe

"I wanted to write a work about our men, who will become heroes in the battle they are engaged in against the enemy for victory… While working on this new symphony, I thought about the greatness of our people, their heroism, their wonderful humanist ideas, their human values, our superb nature, our humanity, our beauty. […] I dedicate my Seventh Symphony to our battle against fascism, to our inevitable victory over the enemy, and to Leningrad, my hometown." 

Musica Contro La Guerra

Attesa, for strings, piano, two horns and percussion (100th anniversary of his birth)


Eliodoro Sollima, whose birth centenary falls this year,  has been a key figure in Sicilian musical life for over half a century. This fact means that his name, much less his music, has been widely distributed beyond the region, with major Italian and international publishers (Schott, Heinrichshofen, Curci, Ricordi, Sonzogno, Berbén, and Sifd) publishing his works. Many of his works were commissioned by prestigious institutions and associations (RAI for the Scarlatti Orchestra of Naples, ARC for the Teatro Nuovo in Milan, AIDEM for the Pitti Palace in Florence, INDA for the Greek Theatre of Syracuse, the Teatro Massimo in Palermo, EAOSS, and the Orestiadi in Gibellina) and have been conducted by such masters as E. Gracis, Z. Pesko, M. Inoue, G. Ferro, A. Ceccato, F. Scaglia, O. Ziino, P. Bellugi, and N. Wiss. His compositional output includes over 300 works, spanning symphonic and chamber music, sacred, stage, and ballet music, and children's piano pieces to compositions conceived as homages to great musicians of the past. His works have received significant recognition, including the Variazioni concertanti for orchestra (1962), which was honored at the Trieste International Competition; the Quartet  for flute, clarinet, violin, and cello, which won first prize at the 1965 Rome National Composers' Exhibition; and the Piano Sonata , which won first prize overall at the 1966 Treviso National Competition. Since 1978, Eliodoro Sollima has been a member of SIAE (Italian Society of Authors and Publishers) for the quantity and quality of performances of his music. In addition to his work as a composer, Sollima always maintained a fruitful relationship between his roles as pianist and teacher. The culmination of this intertwining of experiences is the didactic work Come nasce la musica (Curci, 1987).

Forme Della Libertà

A true child prodigy , Erich Wolfgang Korngold was just 11 years old when, in 1909, he composed the pantomime ballet Der Schneemann. According to his son George, the piano score was published in a limited, private edition by his father Julius, a renowned music critic for the prestigious newspaper "Neue Freie Presse." Immediately afterward, Julius Korngold sent copies of the score, originally written for piano four hands, to some of his friends in the Viennese musical world, including Gustav Mahler, whom he called the young genius, and Alexander von Zemlinsky, Erich's teacher, who orchestrated it. This work, which already proved to be a mature work and not simply a compositional exercise by a gifted student, had such a resonance that Emperor Franz Joseph himself ordered its performance at a gala evening on October 4, 1910, at the Vienna Hofper. Korngold's precocious musical talents emerge already in the Prelude to this work, based on a theatrical fable conceived by the composer himself. The plot revolves around Pierrot's love for Colombina, which is thwarted by her stern uncle, Pantalone. The tale's theatrical, wintry setting is evocatively rendered in the Prelude , which is notable for the lyricism that would distinguish Korngold's later film scores. Placed in the second act of the opera, the Serenade constitutes one of the most lyrical moments of the entire composition, as the composer gave a musical form to the passionate singing of Pierrot, who, disguised as a snowman and positioned under his beloved's window, woos the young woman with a poignant and melancholy melody, entrusted now to the solo violin and now to the woodwinds. 

Vienna 1900

"I kept the title Symphonie Espagnole first because it captured my thoughts well—namely, a solo violin soaring above the rigid form of an old symphony—and second because the title was much less banal than those that had been proposed. The outcry and criticism have subsided; the title will remain." 

Thus an annoyed Édouard Lalo responded to the objections of his contemporaries regarding this composition, which, in reality, does not follow the classical canons of a symphony, but rather approaches the structure of a violin concerto. A skilled violinist himself, Lalo composed this work in 1874 for Pablo de Sarasate. Sarasate, who at a young age had become one of the greatest virtuosos on the European musical scene, was eager to expand his repertoire with compositions by celebrated composers that could showcase his extraordinary technical skills; he therefore asked eminent composers, including Saint-Saëns and Lalo himself, to write concertos specifically for him. First performed at the Concerts Populaires in Paris on February 7, 1875, with Sarasate as soloist, this Symphonie is effectively a concerto in which Spain is evoked through the inclusion of rhythms and melodies drawn from the Iberian musical tradition. 

Romanticismo Infinito

In the summer of 1878, Brahms, returning from Italy, stopped in the village of Pörtschach, in Carinthia. His initial intention was to reach Vienna quickly, but drawn by the beauty and serenity of the place, he remained longer, as he himself wrote to his friend Theodor Billroth: “I stopped in this village on my way back from Italy, intending to continue on to Vienna. But the first day was so beautiful that I decided to stay the second; the second so beautiful that I decided to stay the third, and so on. Snow-white mountains, the blue lake, the trees covered in a tender green... no one could argue with me.”

It was in this splendid setting that the composer conceived his new work. His contemplation of a grand symphonic-instrumental work is also evident from his request for a large amount of music paper to be sent from Vienna, and from a letter to the critic Eduard Hanslick, in which he wrote: "So many melodies wander around this village that one must be careful not to trample on them." 

La Magia Della Danza

This year, too, the Sicilian Symphony Orchestra will celebrate Christmas with its audience through a special event. The program offers a fascinating and rich musical journey through the universal soundtrack of this important Christian holiday. The concert opens with Leroy Anderson's rousing " Sleigh Ride" (1946), renowned for his descriptive use of percussion, evoking the sound of horses trotting and the cracking of whips on the snow. Later, the same composer will perform " A Christmas Festival ," a rhapsodic overture that interweaves the most famous traditional carols. A profound sense of intimacy and nostalgia emanates from the pieces created during the dramatic years of the Second World War. This is the case of White Christmas , composed by Irving Berlin in 1940 and performed for the first time the following year during the program The Kraft Music Hall , and of I'll Be Home for Christmas  (1943) by Walter Kent, whose lyrics feature a soldier stationed abroad who writes to his family. This trend is joined by the poignant sweetness of Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas  by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane, originally introduced by Judy Garland in the famous musical film Meet Me in St. Louis  (1944).

Concerto Di Natale

This year, too, the Orchestra Sinfonica Siciliana invites its audiences on a fascinating journey into the heart of Viennese musical culture between the 19th and 20th centuries. The opening performance features the overture to Johann Strauss Jr.'s three-act operetta, Der Zigeunerbaron ( The Gypsy Baron ), based on a text by Ignaz Schnitzer, which premiered to great acclaim on October 24, 1885, at the Theater an der Wien. The overture, which previews the operetta's main themes, is notable for its orchestration, which vividly evokes Hungarian exoticism, alternating proud gypsy rhythms with seductive waltz movements. Composed in 1902 at the behest of Princess Pauline von Metternich for a sumptuous masked ball, the waltz Gold und Silber,  Op. 79 ( Gold and Silver ) by Franz Lehár stands out for its perfectly balanced thematic writing and a series of emotional contrasts, while the triangle gives a “silvery” touch. The polka repertoire was inaugurated by Im Krapfenwald'l  op. 336 ( In the Krapfen Forest , 1869) by Johann Strauss Jr., which recreates the bucolic atmosphere of the Viennese woods by introducing toy instruments that perfectly imitate the calls of birds, among which the obstinate and humorous call of the cuckoo stands out. His younger brother Eduard composed the popular Ohne Bremse  ( Without Brakes ), a fast polka Op. 238  , composed in 1874, which is notable for its pressing rhythm that evokes, precisely, a mad race without brakes.

Concerto Di Capodanno

Born in Yerevan, Alexander Grigoryevich Arutiunian studied piano and composition at his hometown Conservatory, graduating on the eve of World War II. In 1946, he moved to Moscow to study composition with Litinsky and in 1949 received the Stalin Prize for a cantata. Returning to Yerevan in 1954, he taught at the Conservatory and became artistic director of the Armenian State Philharmonic. Considered by Aram Khachaturyan as a promising Soviet composer, Arutiunian achieved widespread acclaim thanks to a body of work that emphasized the Armenian musical tradition, which also influenced the melodies of his 1950 Concerto for Trumpet and Orchestra. The work had initially been conceived in 1943 for Zsolak Vartasarian, principal trumpet of the Armenian Philharmonic Orchestra, who died during the war. The Concerto was then premiered by Aykaz Messlayan, while Timofei Dokschitzer promoted its international fame by introducing it to the United States. Having become a permanent fixture in the repertoire, the piece has also become a recurring audition piece at the Juilliard School.

Prospettive Sonore

Composed in just 17 days in the spring of 1868, the Second Piano Concerto is certainly Saint-Saëns's most famous work in this genre, having been commissioned by Anton Rubinstein. At the time, the great Russian pianist and conductor was in Paris for a series of eight concerts in which he was to perform as pianist with Saint-Saëns on the podium. Wanting to make his debut in the French capital as a conductor as well, he asked the French composer to compose a Piano Concerto . Given the extremely tight schedule, Saint-Saëns wanted to include his First Piano Concerto in the program , but ultimately decided to perform the Second Piano Concerto , which he had composed in the meantime in a very short time. His solo performance, however, at the premiere on May 13, 1868, in Paris, was not among his finest, as the French composer had not had much time to study the piano part thoroughly. Despite this setback, the Concerto was appreciated by Liszt who, after receiving a copy, wrote to Saint-Saëns in a letter dated 19 July 1869: « The form is new and very happy. The interest in the three pieces is growing ». Liszt had understood the novelty of the Concerto which, according to a famous statement by the Polish pianist Zygmunt Stojowski , begins with the name of Bach and ends with that of Offenbach .