Bratislava Music Festival | Overture for Orchestra

Thursday 24 September 2026, 7.30 pm
Slovak Philharmonic Concert Hall, Bratislava, Slovakia

Bohuslav MARTINŮ: Overture for Orchestra, H 345
Sergei PROKOFIEV: Violin Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 63
Antonín DVOŘÁK: Suite in A major, Op. 98b, B 190
Igor STRAVINSKY: The Firebird, Suite from the Ballet (1919 version)

Czech Philharmonic 
Elim Chan (conductor)
Gil Shaham (violin) 

Bratislava Music Festival

The Czech Philharmonic, a regular guest at the festival, returns this time with the highly sought-after Hong Kong-based conductor Elim Chan. The concert will open with Bohuslav Martinů’s lively Overture for Orchestra, which the composer wrote in 1953 whilst in exile in America. Sergei Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 63, which blends Russian melodicism with European neoclassical poetics, will be performed by the highly sought-after soloist Gil Shaham. He had already won over the audience at the BHS in 2022 as a soloist with the Slovak Philharmonic.

Antonín Dvořák wrote the original piano version of his famous Suite in A major whilst in the USA and orchestrated it in the spring of 1895, shortly before his permanent return to Europe. “It is music that speaks to the listener’s own heart, music that opens up a broad horizon somewhere deep within,” said Czech conductor Petr Altrichter of the piece.

The programme will conclude with the suite from Igor Stravinsky’s ballet The Firebird, one of the composer’s best-known works. The ballet was commissioned by the impresario Sergei Diaghilev for his company, the Ballets Russes, and premiered in Paris in 1910. The ballet’s story weaves together motifs from traditional Russian folk tales.

More information here: https://www.bhsfestival.sk/portfolio/cf-2026/

https://www.ceskafilharmonie.cz/event/37095-bratislava-ceska-filharmonie/