2025 SYMPHONIC SEASON – TEATRO G. VERDI, TRIESTE
From 11 September to 23 December 2025
5th concert
Saturday 4 October 2025 – 6:00 p.m.
Conductor ARIF DADASHEV
Cello ETTORE PAGANO
Sergei Prokofiev Sinfonia Concertante in E minor for cello and orchestra, Op. 125
Modest Mussorgsky Night on Bald Mountain (arr. by Rimsky-Korsakov)
ORCHESTRA OF THE FONDAZIONE TEATRO LIRICO GIUSEPPE VERDI, TRIESTE
The young and increasingly acclaimed cellist Ettore Pagano returns to Trieste, once again a welcome guest on the stage of the Verdi and in perfect harmony with our orchestra. On the podium for an evening entirely devoted to the great Russian repertoire is Arif Dadashev, Music Director of the Stanislavsky Nemirovich-Danchenko Moscow Academic Musical Theatre and Principal Guest Conductor of the Mariinsky Theatre – one of the foremost custodians of the pure Russian tradition and only rarely seen on European stages.
A celebration of Russian music marks the fifth concert of the Verdi’s highly successful symphonic season. Following three near sold-out performances and the world premiere of Giorgio Battistelli’s prestigious commission Fedeli d’Amore, the season continues on Saturday 4 October with two cornerstones of the Slavic repertoire. The programme opens with Prokofiev’s Sinfonia concertante for cello and orchestra, featuring Ettore Pagano in the role once performed by Rostropovich at the 1952 premiere. The richly melodic, songful part for cello was reshaped by the composer in the wake of the Soviet censure of 1948 for “formalist and anti-popular” tendencies. The evening concludes with Mussorgsky’s famous late-19th-century orchestral masterpiece Night on Bald Mountain, performed in Rimsky-Korsakov’s celebrated arrangement, completed after the death of his lifelong friend – with whom he once shared both lodgings and a piano, and whose music he had often reworked with the composer’s consent. On the podium will be Arif Dadashev, a distinguished representative of the great Russian tradition. At forty, he is already Music Director of the Stanislavsky Nemirovich-Danchenko Moscow Academic Musical Theatre and Principal Guest Conductor of the Mariinsky Theatre. Still little known in the West, his appearance is therefore a true rarity and a special treat for the Verdi’s loyal and discerning symphonic audience, who will be invited to revel in an evening steeped in popular legends, witches’ sabbaths, and the childlike echoes of Leopold Stokowski’s famous version for Walt Disney’s unforgettable Fantasia.