The 2023 season of the La Scala Philharmonic Theatre in Milan ends on 20th of November with a concert under the baton of the charismatic director Vasily Petrenko. For the first time this season, the director will perform John Adams' suite - "The Chairman Dances" included in Act III of Nixon in China.

"A music - says the composer about this suite written in 1985 - that is intended as a parody of what I imagined Chinese film music of the 1930s to sound like..."

A foxtrot for orchestra composed at the request of the American Composers Orchestra and the National Endowment for the Arts, enthusiastically received at its first hearing in January 1986 when it was performed by the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. After 12 minutes of foxtrot, the La Scala Philharmonic Orchestra directed by Vasily Petrenko features one of the world's leading violinists - Isabelle Faust, a well-known presence to music lovers and from the George Enescu International Festival, where she delighted with her violin - a 1704 Stradivarius - also called the "Sleeping Beauty", rediscovered in 1900 after being forgotten in an attic for 150 years.

You will hear the sound of this violin again in Bela Bartok's Concerto No. 1. The evening ends with Sergei Rahmaninov's Symphonic Dances op.45. It's the Russian composer's swan song - the last work composed in 1940 on Long Island, his refuge in the United States.

Radio România Muzical broadcasts the last evening of the 2023 season of La Scala Philharmonic, on Monday of the 20th of November, at 9 p.m.