Dohnányi Orchestra Budafok Presented by Liszt Academy

Stravinsky’s Concerto in E-flat major was inscribed Dumbarton Oaks after the estate of the Bliss couple from Washington who commissioned the work for their 30th wedding anniversary. The composer wrote the concerto, deriving from his Neoclassical period, for chamber orchestra; one can clearly sense the inspiration of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos in it. Mozart’s A major aria beginning Vorrei spiegarvi, oh Dio! was written for his sister-in-law, the extremely talented vocalist Aloysia Weber in Vienna in 1783. The original concept was to insert the piece at the end of the first act of the opera Il curioso indiscreto by Pasquale Antossi. The Konstanze's aria requiring extraordinary technical abilities was written for Catarina Cavalieri, one of the most celebrated singers of her day. The subtitle of Richard Strauss’s Don Quixote is ‘Fantastic Variations on a Theme of Knightly Character, for Orchestra’. The composer selected a classical model and variation structure for the story of the dolorous knight, yet even so he turns everything upside down using extreme modes of expression. In the work, the Don Quixote theme is evoked in the cello solo, and the Sancho Panza motif comes from the bass clarinet, tenor tuba and solo viola.