Opera Ballet
1st Concert | From Musical Celebration and Poetic Reflection to the Heroic Force of Symphonic Narrative
Opening Concert of Festival Maribor 2026
SNG Maribor Symphony Orchestra
Conductor: Dayner Tafur-Díaz
Soloists: Maria Ioudenitch, violin; Tim Posner, cello; Geneva Lewis, violin; Emma Wernig, viola
In co-production with Narodni dom Maribor
Lucijan Marija Škerjanc: Festive Overture for Orchestra
Camille Saint-Saëns: La muse et le poète, Op. 132
Max Bruch: Concerto for Violin, Viola and Orchestra in E minor, Op. 88
Bedřich Smetana: Šárka from the cycle of symphonic poems Má vlast (My Fatherland), JB 1:112:3
The opening concert of the Symphony Series, prepared in co-production with Festival Maribor and Narodni dom Maribor, brings together festive orchestral brilliance, concertante dialogue and dramatic symphonic storytelling. The evening begins with Lucijan Marija Škerjanc’s Festive Overture, a work of late-Romantic expressiveness and finely balanced orchestral colour. Saint-Saëns’s rarely performed La muse et le poète follows as a lyrical meditation for violin, cello and orchestra, before Bruch’s warm and melodious Double Concerto places the soloists in a noble concertante exchange. The programme concludes with Smetana’s Šárka, one of the most vivid episodes from Má vlast, whose mythic drama and sweeping orchestral momentum draw the listener into a world of passion, vengeance and fate.
We invite you to see
