For years, I have been a faithful follower of the offerings of the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP), the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra's (PPO) and lately, of SWITCH, which they launched as part of their 39th season and the 50th founding anniversary of the orchestra.

This series, which always falls on a Friday, truly fascinates me. And so, once a month, I would take time off to enjoy the scheduled date at the Samsung Performing Arts Theater. The concept behind SWITCH is simple: Each iteration has a new theme, spotlighting various guest performers each evening.

But there is one constant: the baton of conductor, Maestro Grzegorg Nowak, an esteemed principal associate conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London and was a music director of a multitude of orchestras and operas in Poland, Germany, Switzerland and the United States.

For Concert VI, he was joined by a substitute pianist, Roustem Saitkoulov, a misnomer, as he wowed the audience with Stanislaw Moniuszko's The Fairy Tale Overture, Ludwig van Beethoven's Piano Concerto no. 4, op.58, G major, and Rachmaninoff's Symphony no. 2 op. 27.

The previous installments of SWITCH spotlighted a sterling roster of artists, to include pianist Mark Bebbington, cellist Wen-Sinn Yang, young prodigy pianist Nikolay Khozyainov and pianist Jerome Rose. There was even an appearance by the multi-awarded, former CCP president and the erstwhile University of Santo Tomas Conservatory of Music dean Raul Sunico, whose magical fingers grazed piano keys with such mastery. And thus, we expected piano or violin soloists to take the stage. Little did we expect on the seventh time around, the show was Don Pasquale, a classic Italian comic composition. "It's an opera, so how is this going to be possible?" we asked, fully knowing the guests were always instrumentalists.