Filharmonie Brno / Kružík / Dances, scherzos and the adventures of The Cunning Little Vixen

Date & Time

Sun, Mar 23, 2025, 12:00

Venue

Narodowej Orkiestry Symfonicznej Polskiego Radia, Concert Hall (Katowice)

Music by the Czech composer Bohuslav Martinů is not appreciated enough today, though in the last century his oeuvre – particularly the 1940s New York period – was artistically celebrated. The dynamic and rapid 1945 scherzo for orchestra Thunderbolt P-47 H. 309 is a good case in point – rooted in the convention of a symphonic poem, it satisfies all the requirements of program music and leaves no doubt as to extramusical contexts. It is difficult not to hear the... Read full text

Keywords: Subscription Concert, Symphony Concert

Info & Ticket (nospr.org.pl)

Musicians

Robert Kružík	Conductor
Filharmonie Brno

Program

Bohuslav Martinů	Thunderbolt P-47
Jan Novák	Philharmonic Dances
Leoš Janáček	The Ancient Dance and Blacksmith from the Lachian Dances

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Last update: Fri, Nov 22, 2024, 12:16

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Info (deutscheoperberlin.de)

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The opera gives us scenes from the life of Bystrouska, a young fox. The forester, who has never lost his desire for freedom and love, catches her in the forest one day and takes her home; to him she seems the embodiment of his desire. But Bystrouska manages to escape. In the woods she drives the badger from his set. In her new home she also meets the love of her life: a charming fox courts her and the lovers spend their first night together in the den. They finally wed, surrounded by the animals of the forest. Soon we see the vixen as the proud mother of a crowd of children. But their happiness is shortlived: Bystrouska is shot by the poacher Harasta. Meanwhile the forester and schoolmaster sit in the inn lamenting the onset of old age. The forester reflects bitterly on the death of the vixen. He cannot forget her uninhibited nature, her youthfulness, her urge to be free. In the forest he is enveloped by a quaintly magical atmosphere and falls asleep. As in a vision, a young fox appears to him, the very image of his mother. Life has triumphed over mortality. The wheel has come full circle. „I am creating the Little Fox the way the Devil catches flies – when he has nothing better to do. I wrote the Little Fox for the forest and for the sorrow of my later years.” Leos Janacek wrote. But his opera THE CUNNING LITTLE VIXEN is certainly not the melancholic retrospective of an old man who feels himself closer to death than to life. Although the composer was in his late sixties, he created a work full of comic and poetic moments. Offsetting the „sorrow of his later years” we are given a merry and melancholic fable embracing both death and the comforting knowledge that death leads on to new life. The story is taken from a serialised novel by Rudolf Tesnohlídek illustrated by Stanislav Lolek and published in the Brno daily „Lidové noviny” from 1920 onwards. The composer wrote the libretto himself and the opera was completed by January 1924. It resembles an impressionistic ...

Info (deutscheoperberlin.de)

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Info (deutscheoperberlin.de)

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