The Witching Hour: Music Experience

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THE WITCHING HOUR

Step into a night where the veil grows thin. Singer Anna Aistova and pianist Daria Vasileva lead you through an hour of witches' incantations, drowned lovers, mad scenes, and demons who dance until dawn — songs and piano works, each summoning its own corner of the dark.

The program moves between voice and piano in a single unbroken descent: Rachmaninoff's Pied Piper leads the way, Mendelssohn's witches gather, Glière's mermaid and Dvořák's rusalka call from beneath dark water, and Lucia's mad scene shatters into pure derangement — answered on the piano by Scriabin's visionary Ninth Sonata, the "Black Mass," Medtner's Fairy Tale of the Elves, two scenes from Yarullin's Tatar ballet Shurale (a forest demon and a shaitan's fire dance), and a serenade drawn from Mussorgsky's Songs and Dances of Death.

This concert is built to be felt, sensual and unsettling in equal measure, an intimate hour where the audience is drawn into the spell rather than kept outside it. Halloween punch and candies will be served.

Anna Aistova, soprano, holds degrees from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and the Mannes School of Music. Her recent seasons have taken her from leading roles with Mannes Opera to a solo appearance before over 100,000 people at Mexico City's Luces de Invierno festival, with upcoming engagements including her debut as the Queen of the Night with Regina Opera and a tour to Madrid for Orff's Carmina Burana.

Daria Vasileva, piano, is a passionate concert pianist whose main focus lies on the music of Alexander Scriabin and late Romantic repertoire. She released her debut album Scriabin: Elements on the French label Aparté in June 2026, and in 2024 won Second Prize and the Special Scriabin Prize at the Scriabin International Piano Competition in Italy. She is a 2026 Gilmore Festival Fellow.

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Event Host

Daria Vasileva