The Novaya Opera presents a concert of the theatre’s soloists, Honoured Artists of Russia Elvira Khokhlova (soprano) and Margarita Nekrasova (mezzo-soprano). The concept of the concert is largely shown in its title.

Louis Spohr (1784–1859) is considered one of the first Romantic composers. His style and music idiom combine the trends of the romantic 19th century, Classicism and even Baroque. In particular, Spohr wrote a great number of various chamber ensembles for strings and winds, sometimes with piano (he is an author of trios, quartets, quintets, sestets, a septet, an octet and a nonet!). Sechs Deutsche Lieder (Six German Songs) for voice, clarinet and piano, op. 103 (1837) were composed in terms of the romantic German Lied. At first glance, the cast including voice, piano and clarinet is not quite usual, but there are even more exotic versions by Spohr (songs for voice, violin, and piano, for voice and piano duet, to name a few).

Franz Liszt (1811–1886) composed the first version of Sonetti di Petrarca (No. 47, 104, 123) as early as the late 1830s. As well as a number of Liszt’s other works, the sonnets exist in two equitable author’s versions – for voice and piano and for piano solo (as a part of the second Années de pèlerinage (Years of Pilgrimage)). Liszt repeatedly returned to the compositions through to the 1860s. Based on the works by the great poet of the Proto-Renaissance, Liszt’s Sonetti di Petrarca are one of the supreme expressions of Romanticism in music, a masterpiece of amorous poetry.

The romances by Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873–1943) are the high point and the generalization of the main lines in the 19th-century Russian vocal music. The classical branch of the Russian romance coming from Glinka and his contemporaries, Balakirev’s instrumental romances, psychological sketches and momentary musical portraits characteristic of Dargomyzhsky and his followers – the composers of The Five (Rimsky-Korsakov, Borodin, Mussorgsky); Tchaikovsky’s lyrico-dramatic works – these and other worlds made up the enormous, comprehensive world of Rachmaninoff’s vocal music. The novelty of Rachmaninoff’s romances is first of all in the incredible density of the musical thought. It is especially visible in his small works: one or two note pages comprise plots that can be compared in their depth and strength of dramatic development with opera monologues, scenes and symphonic parts.
The utterance structure itself (preferential propensity to dramatic monologue) shows Rachmaninoff as an outstanding Romanticist. However, in his romances (as well as in the compositions of other genres) the composer adopts the trends of contemporary music – impressionism, modernism, etc. With time Rachmaninoff’s chamber vocal music leaned to the Symbolists’ poetry; it is characteristic that his last romance opus – No.38 – was composed to the lyrics by Blok, Bryusov, Balmont, Bely and Severyanin.