The Little
Mermaid

Orawa? This amusing title is the name of the small region between Poland and Slovakia that inspired Wojciech Kilar to write a score in which the orchestra's infectious energy evokes a range of images and emotions. This folk inspiration is a constant feature of the Polish composer, who devoted much of his career to film music, from Paul Grimault's The King and the Mockingbird to Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula and Roman Polanski's The Pianist. 

Nearby Bohemia inspired Antonín Dvořák to write the most beautiful of melodies for his imposing Cello Concerto, a monument of technical difficulty and romantic expression in which the soloist must struggle with the opulence of the orchestral writing. More romanticism follows with the Die Seejungfrau fantasy (The Mermaid), in which Alexander von Zemlinsky soothes the pain of a broken heart through the heroine of Andersen's fairy tale.