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No conductor leads this chamber orchestra. Two experienced and sought-after chamber musicians, soloists, and Eisler professors, violinist Ulf Wallin and cellist Claudio Bohórquez, rehearse the concert program alongside the students. In the annual "Play&Lead Concerts" at the Konzerthaus Berlin, teachers and the ensemble meticulously work on highly demanding pieces. This offers valuable work experience for young instrumental students.
When Petr Popelka conducts the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra in music by three of the most famous composers from his Czech homeland, that is a speciality in itself. And Dvořák’s »The Noon Witch« adds another rarity to the programme. In this symphonic poem, a witch appears on the scene at exactly noon and has a decisive influence on events in both the underlying fairy tale and the music. Of course, Dvořák did not miss the opportunity to incorporate the chimes of the church clock into his composition. We also hear a work by Dvořák’s son-in-law Josef Suk, who set four other fairy tale scenes to music in his orchestral piece »Pohádka«. But this Czech evening opens with music by Suk’s pupil Bohuslav Martinů. With his numerous echoes of folk music, Martinů enchanted not only his fellow countrymen, but also American culture-lovers in the 1940s and 1950s. It goes almost without saying that his Violin Concerto is performed by the exceptional Czech violinist Josef Špaček.
»Yes, just love him, love him so much – but don’t forget that he achieved poetic freedom after years of study, go back to the foundation of his work, don’t prove his genius through the last symphony!« Schumann said this about Beethoven – and it is indeed the case that the Symphony No. 4, which Jakub Hrůša has chosen for this programme, is often treated somewhat like a Cinderella among the nine symphonies. Quite wrongly, because it is an equally masterful composition: it stands in B flat major, which is an expression of the »yearning for a better world« according to the symbolism of musical keys of a certain Mr Schubart, and is characterised by a friendly tone with many wonderful ideas. Our Chief Conductor combines it with an equally neglected piece from the pen of his beloved composer Dvořák. We will be playing the fascinating piano concerto together with the acclaimed pianist Daniil Trifonov: the wide-ranging work was premiered in Prague in 1878 and features a magnificent richness of deeply felt inspirations. We will first present the programme in Bamberg, but then also in Linz – and also travel to the birthplace of Jakub Hrůša, where we have something to celebrate: 1924 was the first time that the »Year of Czech Music« was celebrated. It goes without saying that we have to be there, and our luggage includes the two pieces that were played at the opening concert of the year-long festival in Brno – on the occasion of Josef Suk’s 50th birthday and Janáček’s 70th birthday. In other words, music by two more of our Chief Conductor’s favourite artists: The magnificent autobiographical tone poem »Zrání« and the sparkling orchestral rhapsody »Taras Bulba«.
Under the baton of conductor Andrey Boreyko, the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra turns its attention eastwards. The Czech Josef Suk, a pupil and son-in-law of Antonín Dvořák, created an orchestral work with his fantastic Scherzo that is emphatically vibrant – and absolutely holds its own when it comes to expressiveness alongside the Divertimento that follows, from Stravinsky’s ballet »The Fairy’s Kiss«.
Under the baton of conductor Andrey Boreyko, the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra turns its attention eastwards. The Czech Josef Suk, a pupil and son-in-law of Antonín Dvořák, created an orchestral work with his fantastic Scherzo that is emphatically vibrant – and absolutely holds its own when it comes to expressiveness alongside the Divertimento that follows, from Stravinsky’s ballet »The Fairy’s Kiss«.
Gorgeous late-romantic soundscapes – featuring works by Josef Suk and Leoš Janáček, who are among Jakub Hrůša’s favourite composers. It is thus a matter of the heart for him to regularly introduce audiences to pieces by these fascinating composers that are still relatively unknown outside the Czech Republic. The captivating »Asrael« Symphony already delivered proof of how well this works – and Josef Suk is also being celebrated this year on the occasion of his 150th birthday with an imposing musical autobiography: the programme includes his tone poem »Zráni«, finished in 1917, revolving around human maturity and elevating love to the core aspiration of our existence. Even the conductor of the premiere was absolutely enthusiastic, as he is said to have kissed the score in front of the concert audience and exclaimed in honour of Smetana’s famous cycle: »A second fatherland!« Janáček’s grandiose work was composed at virtually the same time – the scoring of a story about a Cossack culminating in a marvellous apotheosis. Jakub Hrůša fell in love with this composition, as he explained in an interview: »'Taras Bulba' is at the centre of my musical life. I didn't choose it, it just so happened. It was the first work and I’m still in love with it.« The brilliant »Paganini Rhapsody« by Rachmaninov from 1934 – who once answered the question »What is music?« in his typically poetic language: »That which goes from heart to heart, love.« – is also an emotional companion to the two Bohemian pieces.
Gorgeous late-romantic soundscapes – featuring works by Josef Suk and Leoš Janáček, who are among Jakub Hrůša’s favourite composers. It is thus a matter of the heart for him to regularly introduce audiences to pieces by these fascinating composers that are still relatively unknown outside the Czech Republic. The captivating »Asrael« Symphony already delivered proof of how well this works – and Josef Suk is also being celebrated this year on the occasion of his 150th birthday with an imposing musical autobiography: the programme includes his tone poem »Zráni«, finished in 1917, revolving around human maturity and elevating love to the core aspiration of our existence. Even the conductor of the premiere was absolutely enthusiastic, as he is said to have kissed the score in front of the concert audience and exclaimed in honour of Smetana’s famous cycle: »A second fatherland!« Janáček’s grandiose work was composed at virtually the same time – the scoring of a story about a Cossack culminating in a marvellous apotheosis. Jakub Hrůša fell in love with this composition, as he explained in an interview: »'Taras Bulba' is at the centre of my musical life. I didn't choose it, it just so happened. It was the first work and I’m still in love with it.« The brilliant »Paganini Rhapsody« by Rachmaninov from 1934 – who once answered the question »What is music?« in his typically poetic language: »That which goes from heart to heart, love.« – is also an emotional companion to the two Bohemian pieces.
»›I can’t remember things before they happen,‹ remarked Alice. ›It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards,‹ the Queen remarked.« (Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There) Ligeti’s Cello Concerto rises out of nowhere, without a red carpet for the soloist’s performance, but rather as a journey through the interstices of silence and the barely audible, of sound and noise, to explore the extreme subtleties of timbre and emotion. An anti-concert with a hypnotic effect that challenges boundaries and laws. Anton Kraft was also fond of playing with what was possible, which had already impressed his contemporaries Haydn and Beethoven. The Monkey Mountains, also known as the Krkonoše Mountains, inspired the Czech composer Pavel Haas almost exactly a century ago. At a time of great political unrest and personal turmoil, he created an expressive work full of emotions and contrasts: peaks rise up like sleeping giants, dancing on tiptoe to mazurkas and polkas to catchy melodies, only to fall out of time and form with drums at the end. From delicate, lyrical passages to explosive, rhythmic outbursts, this piece offers a variety of impressions that resonate long after you leave the concert hall. Banned at the time, but not forgotten.
»›I can’t remember things before they happen,‹ remarked Alice. ›It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards,‹ the Queen remarked.« (Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There) Ligeti’s Cello Concerto rises out of nowhere, without a red carpet for the soloist’s performance, but rather as a journey through the interstices of silence and the barely audible, of sound and noise, to explore the extreme subtleties of timbre and emotion. An anti-concert with a hypnotic effect that challenges boundaries and laws. Anton Kraft was also fond of playing with what was possible, which had already impressed his contemporaries Haydn and Beethoven. The Monkey Mountains, also known as the Krkonoše Mountains, inspired the Czech composer Pavel Haas almost exactly a century ago. At a time of great political unrest and personal turmoil, he created an expressive work full of emotions and contrasts: peaks rise up like sleeping giants, dancing on tiptoe to mazurkas and polkas to catchy melodies, only to fall out of time and form with drums at the end. From delicate, lyrical passages to explosive, rhythmic outbursts, this piece offers a variety of impressions that resonate long after you leave the concert hall. Banned at the time, but not forgotten.
Following a brilliant Elbphilharmonie debut in 2019 with »his« Bamberg Symphony, conductor Jakub Hrůša has become a popular regular visitor to the Elbphilharmonie. From his Czech homeland, he not only brings undoubtedly its best orchestra, but also provides a wonderful programme. This evening’s soloist is the young talented star Sheku Kanneh-Mason performing an all-time favourite cello concerto. Dvořák’s Cello Concerto is one of the most frequently performed cello concertos of all, although Dvořák apparently considered the instrument no more than »a piece of wood that screeches at the top and drones at the bottom«. Yet, the composer must have secretly loved the cello because this composition is captivating with enchanting songlike melodies, great dramatic progressions and delicately lyrical passages. This evening’s soloist is 24-year-old British rising star Sheku Kanneh-Mason, winner of the 2016 BBC Young Musician award. This piece with its virtuoso leaps and technical intricacies offers him many possibilities to demonstrate the qualities of this instrument. »The music saved me!« writes Josef Suk, who dedicated the »Asrael« Symphony to two dear relatives, who had recently passed away. The work is named after the archangel who, in Islam, guides the souls of the dead to paradise. It is a work of magnificent beauty; despair and grief meet poetically transfiguring memory. Funeral March, Dance of Death, tender portrait of his wife – the music is so emotionally powerful that one wonders why Suk has not (yet) achieved the popularity of his contemporary Gustav Mahler or his father-in-law Antonín Dvořák!
Summer, sun, festivals – we love this buzzing time and the magical bonding moments when hearts beat to the rhythm of music. Our first trip of the new season takes us to the heartland of bagpipes: there’s a lot happening in the Scottish capital Edinburgh in August, with its winding alleys virtually bursting at the seams as there's culture on almost every corner. Right in the centre of it all for classical music fans: the prestigious Edinburgh International Festival, founded in 1947 – and where we have a short residency this year.The current motto there is »Rituals That Unite Us«, so it’s all about the rituals intended to bring people closer together again – which fits in perfectly with our love theme. We are performing in Edinburgh with a programme of our choice: from Bamberg we bring our favourite pieces with us as musical calling cards. These include our widely acclaimed spotlight on Hans Rott’s First Symphony – and the exciting love triangle between this artist, who died young, and the two masters Bruckner and Mahler. We have also recently explored the close friendship between Brahms and Dvořák – and are playing two important works by these brilliant composers. As a monumental finale, our last concert in Edinburgh will feature a larger portion of Czech music together with the local Festival Chorus – with poignant compositions by Dvořák and his son-in-law Josef Suk.
Ballrooms have had a great time in Berlin. Without the plush dance halls, the Golden Twenties would probably not have become the cult brand that it is today, and which even had an impact on the founding years of radio. The RSB opens up two of Berlin’s lovingly maintained ballrooms for selected chamber concerts: the Ballhaus Wedding and the Ballhaus Neukölln, today’s “Heimathafen”.Both mark stations on an imaginary line between the orchestra’s two radio houses during its 100-year history: the Haus des Rundfunks in Charlottenburg and the Funkhaus Nalepastraße in Oberschöneweide.
There is intriguing soul food to be discovered in this chamber concert: The symphonist Mahler is hardly connected with small ensembles. However, he loved »Hausmusik« and wrote the inventive and passionate quartet movement in A minor in 1876 during his time as a student in Vienna, music that even back then »stirred up great sympathy«. Later, in 1973, the sketched opening of a scherzo surfaced, which Mahler had apparently intended to be the second movement – and Alfred Schnittke adopted these bars as the foundation for his exciting Piano Quartet from 1988: He developed a process with the aspiration to »remember something that never came to be«. But the endeavour to track Mahler's tonal language fails repeatedly and the composition finally culminates in the original quotation from the fragment: »It appears and pauses« – and so remains further unfinished. Brahms wrote his Piano Quartet op. 25 during a difficult phase of his life, full of self-doubt. It remains a speculation whether he thought of his beloved Clara Schumann with every bar – who played the piano part at the premiere in 1861 and was »terribly nervous« because the work »lay so heavily on her heart«. It captivates with its intense motivic relationships and features a Hungarian-flavoured rondo as a sweeping finale. The first string quartet by Josef Suk is likewise deeply emotional: it was composed in 1896 and a contemporary raved that it was »the best« he knew of Suk. The beguiling work does indeed also revel in Bohemian folklore, but the sometimes very introspective view and the fluctuating moods make it sound like a confessional psychogram – after all, Josef Suk saw himself as an artist who wanted to express with music »what the soul was full of«.
"Women, you angels of the earth! Heaven's loveliest creation! You are the sole ray that illuminates our lives." (Alphonse de Lamartine) We start with the meaning-laden Adagietto from Mahler's Fifth Symphony, inspired in 1901 by his blossoming love for his future wife Alma. A musical marriage proposal with strings and harp, it is a beguilingly beautiful work, albeit shot through with hauntingly world-weary and nostalgic tones. Like many great composers, Richard Strauss had a strong woman at his side – the singer Pauline, for whom he composed many of his vocal works. His lush "Four Last Songs" strike a tone of farewell. These settings of texts by Hesse and Eichendorff were written in 1948, when Strauss’ world had been shattered by the war and he was growing “weary of wandering”, to quote the final line of the last song. While profound grief can often stifle creativity, it sometimes can also awaken new creative energies – as proven by our programme’s emotional final piece, a "work of superhuman strength" written by Josef Suk, who had close personal ties with Dvořák. He became not only the latter’s master student, but also his friend and son-in-law as well, falling in love with Dvořák’s daughter Otylka. But this happiness was abruptly destroyed by Dvořák’s demise in 1904 and the tragically early death of Otylka a mere fourteen months later. Suk wrote the moving symphony "Asrael" to overcome this trauma and in memory of his loved ones, saying: "Such misfortune either destroys a person or brings all the forces lying dormant in them to the surface. Music saved me."
"Women, you angels of the earth! Heaven's loveliest creation! You are the sole ray that illuminates our lives." (Alphonse de Lamartine) We start with the meaning-laden Adagietto from Mahler's Fifth Symphony, inspired in 1901 by his blossoming love for his future wife Alma. A musical marriage proposal with strings and harp, it is a beguilingly beautiful work, albeit shot through with hauntingly world-weary and nostalgic tones. Like many great composers, Richard Strauss had a strong woman at his side – the singer Pauline, for whom he composed many of his vocal works. His lush "Four Last Songs" strike a tone of farewell. These settings of texts by Hesse and Eichendorff were written in 1948, when Strauss’ world had been shattered by the war and he was growing “weary of wandering”, to quote the final line of the last song. While profound grief can often stifle creativity, it sometimes can also awaken new creative energies – as proven by our programme’s emotional final piece, a "work of superhuman strength" written by Josef Suk, who had close personal ties with Dvořák. He became not only the latter’s master student, but also his friend and son-in-law as well, falling in love with Dvořák’s daughter Otylka. But this happiness was abruptly destroyed by Dvořák’s demise in 1904 and the tragically early death of Otylka a mere fourteen months later. Suk wrote the moving symphony "Asrael" to overcome this trauma and in memory of his loved ones, saying: "Such misfortune either destroys a person or brings all the forces lying dormant in them to the surface. Music saved me."
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