Let’s celebrate Valentine Day at the National Forum of Music! The compositions by Josef Strauss, Franz Lehár and Ennio Morricone, full of loving emotions, will be performed by the West Side Sinfonietta under the direction of Marcin Danilewski.

The concert will start with the Perlen der Liebe – a charming concert waltz by Josef Strauss. The composer gave this work to his future wife, Karoline Pruckmayer, on the eve of their wedding on 8 June 1857 as an expression of love. This evening will also feature the spirited Brennende Liebe – Polka-Mazurka op. 129 from 1862, one of many compositions of this type that can be found in the Strausses’ oeuvre. Created at the beginning of the twentieth century, Franz Lehár’s operetta The Merry Widow had its world premiere at Vienna’s Theater an der Wien. Although it initially received unflattering reviews, it quickly won the hearts of both the audience and previously divided critics. The musicians will perform a potpourri made up of the most famous fragments of the work. Jules Massenet’s Meditations is a work most often performed in concerts, though in fact it is an intermezzo from his opera Thaïs. It is music full of beauty, but also painful melancholy.

The Valentine Day repertoire will be complemented by the works of the greatest artists in the history of music: the Symphony No. 10 in G major KV 74 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the famous Adagietto from Symphony No. 5 in C sharp minor for strings and harp by Gustav Mahler and the Introduction et Allegro for flute, clarinet and string quartet by Maurice Ravel. Of the lesser-known compositions, the musicians will present the Féerie by the French composer and harpist Marcel Tournier. The last one will be the sounds of Gabriel’s Oboe by Ennio Morricone from The Mission directed by Roland Joffé.