Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale of the Little Mermaid is world-famous: In the depths of the sea, the mermaid swaps her fish tail for legs with the sea witch so that she can emerge into the human world. This costs her her voice. During a storm, she rescues a prince. However, he ends up marrying someone else and she, the creature of nature, has to perish as foam on the waves. Alexander Zemlinsky has captured her tragic fate in impressive, dazzling orchestral colours.
Sergei Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No. 3 is also a work full of passion and is one of the composer's most popular works. He played the New York premiere in 1909 himself and gave it the nickname ‘Concerto for Elephants’, as elephants are considered to be extremely sensitive animals. It requires both enormous technical skill and a very sensitive interpretation of the lyrical passages. In them, the composer pays homage to his Russian homeland, from which he was to flee eight years later, never to return.