The concerts at the Moscow Philharmonic on May 20 and 21, 1944 featured the works of Soviet, American, and British composers. During the war, the Soviet Union, the United States, and Great Britain formed a military coalition, which is why Soviet music was popular in the Allied countries, while American and British music was often performed in the Soviet Union.

The British and Americans listened to the cantata “Alexander Nevsky” and the Seventh Sonata by Sergei Prokofiev, as well as the Seventh Symphony of Dmitri Shostakovich. The concerts on May 20 and 21 started with the national anthems of the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and the United States. The first concert featured the music of the British composers Edward Elgar, Christian Darnton, and Ralph Vaughan Williams. On behalf of the Soviet Union, it included the music of Dmitri Shostakovich and Sergei Prokofiev.

The second concert was dedicated to American music. It included the compositions by Roy Harris, Wallingford Riegger, and Samuel Barber. Soviet music was represented by the composers Aram Khachaturian and Yuri Shaporin. The program placed a special emphasis on folk music. Prokofiev and Shostakovich performed an orchestration of English folk songs for vocals and orchestra. During the first concert, musicians performed the English Folk Song Suite by Ralph Vaughan Williams and Prokofiev’s Russian Overture partially inspired by folk music. The second concert featured American songs arranged by Stephen Foster, Jerome Kern, and George Gershwin.

Prokofiev conducted fragments of his cantata “Alexander Nevsky”. The cantata about the Battle of Lake Chudskoye was written before World War II but became especially relevant during the war years. In this context, the lines “Arise, Russian people!” and “In our native Russia, in great Russia, the enemy will never stand” sounded like a call to fight against the Nazis. Another famous Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich performed at the same concert as Prokofiev. He played the piano in his First Piano Concerto.