On Wednesday, June 26., 2024, the Small Roman Theater in Pula will host one of the oldest European radio orchestras, the HRT Symphony Orchestra. After concluding the season in Zagreb, the orchestra will perform its closing program from this year's Masters cycle. The concert will be led by the young and promising conductor Ivan Šćepanović, together with the famous Croatian pianist Martina Filjak.

Martina Filjak will present her mastery to the Pula audience with three extraordinary compositions. The first is Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue", a composition that defined the American golden age of jazz. The second is the famous "Concerto for piano and orchestra in G major" by Maurice Ravel. This concerto, influenced by jazz and Basque folk music, has three movements, and Ravel stated that his intention was to entertain the listener in the style of Mozart or Saint-Saëns.

Thanks to the success of Rhapsody in Blue, George Gershwin continued to fuse jazz with classical music forms. During his stay in Paris in 1926, where he studied with Ravel, the French composer allegedly told him that he could not teach him anything new, because "why would he be a second-grade Ravel, when he can be a  Gershwin". Inspired by his time in Paris, as well as Ravel's concert tour of the USA, Gershwin composed the symphonic poem An American in Paris by 1928, describing it as "the impressions of an American visitor to Paris as he walks through the city, listening to the various street sounds and absorbing the French atmosphere". . For the needs of the premiere in Carnegie Hall, he brought four taxi trumpets from Paris to New York, which were integrated into the symphonic composition of the New York Philharmonic.

The unique atmosphere of the Little Roman Theater, enveloped in the sounds of the piano and the accompaniment of the HRT Symphony Orchestra, will take you back to the golden age of the 1920s.