Thu, 18. 5. 2023, 7.00 p.m.

A7 VODIČKA / FBM

Venue: Zlín Congress Centre  |  Organizer: Filharmonie Bohuslava Martinů, o.p.s.  | 

Our final Subscription Series A concert features works by composers who spent part or all of their lives on the American continent.

The concert opens with The Unanswered Question, a small-scale piece by Charles Ives, one of the founders of modern American music. This intriguing work is a perfect example of the composer's exceptional grasp of stratification whereby a freely-flowing melody in the strings is overlaid by an imaginary "Why?". But this fundamental question remains unanswered ...

Samuel Barber is one of the most eminent American composers, and tonight we will hear his only violin concerto performed by Jiří Vodička. This consummate piece written in 1939, combining stirring lyric intensity with deft violin virtuosity, soon brought the composer public and critical acclaim.

Our final work this evening also dates back to the thirties. Sergei Rachmaninov's Symphony No. 3 had its premiere in Philadelphia in 1936, but to a relatively lukewarm reception, and the composer did not conceal his disappointment since he believed that his third was the best he had written. While this work has never been as warmly received as his second symphony, it is nonetheless a remarkable piece with its melancholic recollections of the composer's native country and distant past. Perhaps that is why the eminent Russian musicologist Boris Asafyev called it a "symphony of memories".

Tonight's concert is conducted by Jakub Klecker, permanent conductor at the Brno National Theatre's Janáček Opera Company.