Skopje, 1 October 2025 (MIA) – The Philharmonic will open its new concert season Thursday at 8 pm with a "Classical Restart" concert of works by Bete Ilin, Edward Elgar and Antonín Dvořák. The concert will be conducted by Yeruham Scharovsky and will feature Colombian cellist Santiago Cañón Valencia as soloist.

The Philharmonic's 2025-26 season program is titled "#NoFilter" as the musicians wanted to stress that "classical music is not subject to artificial beautification." Classical music is "art without makeup, art at its most authentic," Philharmonic director Mustafa Imeri told a press conference Tuesday.

Imeri announced the Philharmonic's concert at Vienna's Musikverein on Oct. 28 featuring Ana Durlovski and Igor Durlovski as soloists. The orchestra will perform works by three Macedonian composers — Gligor Smokvarski, Bete Ilin and Soni Petrovski — as well as Dvořák's Symphony No. 8.

During the season, Imeri said, the Philharmonic will perform concerts featuring Macedonian clarinetist Vasko Dukovski, violinist Frosina Bogdanovska, cellist Pascal Krapovski and violinist Sihana Badivuku as well as a number of foreign soloists.

The orchestra's anniversary concert on Nov. 27 will feature Armenian violinist Sergey Khachatryan. Also featured will be violist Alexander Zemtsov, violinists Tedi Papavrami, Ava Bahari, Shkëlzen Doli and Ning Feng, harpist Anneleen Lenaerts, and pianists Andrew von Oeyen and Alim Beisembayev.

The Philharmonic's concertmasters Anna Kondratenko and Vladimir Kostov, who participated in drawing up the season program, said they had paid special attention to including works from diverse eras.

For the first time, the Philharmonic will perform Welsh composer Karl Jenkins's vocal-instrumental work "The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace" and Dmitri Shostakovich'a Symphony No. 11 in G minor, Op. 103 (subtitled "The Year 1905").

The orchestra will also perform major orchestral works such as Igor Stravinsky's 1913 ballet "The Rite of Spring" ("Le Sacre du printemps").

In addition to symphonic concerts, the 2025-26 concert season will include a number of chamber concerts and symphonic concerts for children, as well. mr/