Klaus Mäkelä
Mischa Maisky Antonín Dvořák
Alexander von Zemlinsky

Carl Maria von Weber (1786–1826) was terminally ill from tuberculosis when he wrote the opera Oberon, which was to be his last work. Oberon was Weber's only opera with an English text and was first performed in the spring of 1826 in London, where Weber died just a few weeks later. Oberon is an elven king from medieval literature, and the Overture is one of Weber's most original orchestral pieces – his inventiveness as an orchestral composer inspired later composers such as Hector Berlioz, Gustav Mahler, and Claude Debussy.

Alexander von Zemlinsky (1871–1942) was one of the prominent musical personalities in his home city of Vienna at the beginning of the 20th century, among other things, as Arnold Schönberg's teacher and brother-in-law. In 1901 he had a relationship with Alma Schindler, who later became Gustav Mahler's wife. He worked on the sorrow of love through his work on the orchestral fantasy Die Seejungfrau, based on H.C. Andersen's fairy tale The Little Mermaid. Zemlinsky withdrew Die Seejungfrau after its premiere in 1905, and it was long thought to have been lost. But the score was rediscovered in the 1980s and has become one of the composer's most-played works.

Antonín Dvořák (1841–1907) wrote a cello concerto already when he was working as an anonymous violist in the opera orchestra in Prague in the 1860s. He never quite finished and was then skeptical about whether the cello was suitable as a solo instrument. In 1892 he became director of the National Conservatory in New York, and there he heard a new cello concerto that a colleague had written. Finally, he was convinced of the potential, and in 1896 his Cello Concerto in B minor was premiered in London. Since then, it has been one of the most popular cello concertos.