Szymanowski:
Symphony No. 3 “Song of the night”

Weinberg:
Symphony No. 6 op. 79

Tchaikovsky:
Theme & 8 Variations (1948)

Karol Szymanowski’s Symphony No. 3 "Song of the Night" (1921) is an ecstatic work with a great deal of percussion, celesta, piano, two harps and a large orchestra and describes a mystical experience during a sleepless night. Typical for the symphony is the alternation of the full orchestra's tutti passages with reduced, chamber-musical sequences featuring the musical setting of the text. Harmonically, the symphony hovers over a foundation related to the harmonic idiom of Debussy and, above all, of Skryabin. Mieczyslav Weinberg is regarded as the most independent and important of all of Shostakovich's students. "Ah, if only I could put my name at the bottom of this work," is what Shostakovich is said to have exclaimed about Weinberg's Sixth Symphony, which was premiered in 1963. Even if this work emerged from the depths of a man who had personally experienced the Holocaust, it nevertheless has a life-affirming, optimistic conclusion, which is very typical of Weinberg's work. Vladimir Fedosseyev was a close friend of Weinberg, who dedicated his 14th Symphony to his friend, about whom he wrote in 1988: "If I write a symphony today, I can only hope that it will land in the hands of Vladimir Fedosseyev." The Theme and 8 Variations by Boris Tchaikovsky has long been a part of the repertoire of Fedosseyev, who became great friend of the composer during his lifetime.