Under the baton of Jurek Dybał, the NFM Wrocław Philharmonic will perform works whose leitmotif is the fight for freedom and dignity. For the first time in Poland, a work by an eminent composer will be played, in which solo parts will be presented by two trumpeters.

The concert will open with the cheerful Fidelio Overture, the only opera completed by Ludwig van Beethoven, which is a manifesto against tyranny. Working on the opera caused the artist many difficulties, and he was not entirely satisfied with the result. The featured overture is Beethoven’s fourth orchestral introduction to Fidelio. This opera, belonging to a genre popular in the eighteenth century, known as the “opera of horror and unexpected salvation”, has been staged quite rarely due its static plot and musical language, which does not give the singers too many opportunities to show off. This will be followed by the Concerto for two trumpets and orchestra. Its author is the Turkish composer and pianist Fazil Say, born in Ankara in 1970. Say’s prolific output includes almost fifty works for various line-ups. There are three symphonies among them. The piece we will hear was commissioned by the National Forum of Music in Wrocław, MŰPA in Budapest, hr-Sinfonieorchester Frankfurt, Beethoven Orchester Bonn and the Prague Symphony Orchestra. The solo parts will be played by Gábor Boldoczki and Sergei Nakariakov – virtuosos considered to be among the greatest trumpeters of our time. The premiere of the work will take place in Budapest on May 13, 2023. Fazil Say experienced firsthand how topical the problem of limiting freedom of speech has been in his homeland. In 2012, the artist openly declared himself an atheist and spoke unflatteringly about the Islamic concept of paradise and life in such a conservative country as Turkey. The artist was accused of blasphemy. He was facing up to a year in prison, but the sentence was eventually overturned.

The second part of the concert will feature selected excerpts from the four-act ballet Spartacus by the Armenian composer Aram Khachaturian. The protagonist is a Thracian slave, the leader of the biggest and most dangerous uprising in the history of Rome. It is estimated that sixty to one hundred thousand slaves and gladiators took part in it. The insurrection was bloodily suppressed by Marcus Crassus. Spartacus died during the battle and his body was never found. Based on threads from his life, Khachaturian’s ballet is, due to the colorfulness and communicativeness of the musical language, one of his best-known and most frequently played compositions by this Armenian composer. It was staged for the first time in 1956 in St. Petersburg, known at that time under the name of Leningrad.