On 10 May 2026, the NDR Radio Philharmonic Orchestra will present the world premiere of Olga Rayeva’s orchestral work The Planet. Night Flight in a moderated concert conducted by Stanislav Kochanovsky. The programme, running from 18:00 to 20:00, also features Sergei Prokofiev’s Cinderella suite, compiled by Kochanovsky, and will be introduced by NDR presenter Friederike Westerhaus.
Rayeva’s new composition was written especially for the orchestra’s 75th anniversary and opens the evening’s concert. The work reflects the composer’s personal and imaginative relationship with night, space, and cosmic motion.
In her own words, Rayeva explains the origin of the piece:
“I am a person of the night (I usually wake up in the second half of the day, closer to evening, and go to bed at dawn). At night, the space outside the window seems to expand — it feels larger than during the day — and I look out at the stars and remember how my father told me that the light from many of them reaches us after thousands of years, and that they are witnesses to ancient civilizations.”
She continues by describing the central imaginative shift that shapes the work:
“At night — at home — I feel like a passenger on a cosmic liner flying through the Universe. And at the same time, the Earth — this great ship (and I along with it) — orbits the Sun to return to the same (?) point a year later, while simultaneously rotating counterclockwise (and I along with it) around its axis. And it is this period — this night flight — from drifting into the night until the sunrise, that I have tried to capture in my piece.”
The structure of the composition follows this arc of movement between night and dawn. Rayeva describes the opening as capturing the “tender is the night” atmosphere at the start of the journey. The central section shifts perspective: “In the middle of the piece, however, it is a gaze through the window at the stars / an EVA (extravehicular activity) into open Space from an orbital station…” The conclusion returns toward daylight, culminating in what she describes as a “massive Sun (positioned low on the horizon, it seems gigantic compared to all earthly objects).”
Musically, The Planet. Night Flight is conceived as a continuous trajectory of perception and transformation, where orchestral sound reflects shifting spatial awareness—from intimate nighttime stillness to vast cosmic scale.
The premiere is presented alongside Prokofiev’s Cinderella, a work composed under the pressures of wartime history yet filled with colour, dance, and narrative clarity. Together, the two works form a program that contrasts historical ballet tradition with contemporary orchestral imagination, linking themes of transformation, movement, and escape.
With The Planet. Night Flight, Rayeva contributes a new orchestral vision that connects personal nocturnal experience with cosmic imagery, positioning the listener within a journey between Earth, orbit, and universe.
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