Thu, 2. 2. 2023, 7.00 p.m.

B4 MAHLER / SEVENTH

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

Early February sees the Zlín Congress Centre's concert hall as the venue for Gustav Mahler's monumental Symphony No. 7 performed for the first time in its 76-year history by the Bohuslav Martinů Philharmonic Orchestra under its Chief Conductor Robert Kružík.

The symphony was written in 1905, when Mahler was at a low ebb of darkness, emptiness and despair. The five-movement work has a certain amount in common with the finale of the previous symphony, but the beginning did not come easily. Mahler completed one of the movements in the summer of 1904 with the intention of continuing work on the piece to complete it by the following summer, and with this in mind he went off to see his family near Austria's Wörthersee. Feeling under pressure to complete the work, however, brought on writer's block and Mahler wrote that he tortured himself late into the night, and even a trip to the Dolomites failed to revive the creative process. Only on returning to the Wörthersee did Mahler rediscover his creative muse with the plying of the oars on the water. "At the first stroke of the oars," he wrote later, "I hit upon the theme of the introduction to the first movement" and within four weeks the rest of the symphony was completed.

The Seventh Symphony is a typically monumental Mahlerian work strongly reflecting the composer's philosophical underpinnings and inner world, flowing from the imaginary voice of nature through the soul's struggle with darkness and doubt, nocturnal visions and episodes from his childhood to a finale full of hope and exaltation, albeit with a somewhat sarcastic brilliance. Here, as in some of his earlier symphonies, Mahler used some less conventional instruments such as cow bells, tenor horn, guitar and mandolin.

Mahler himself conducted the work's premiere in September 1908 with a 100-strong Czech Philharmonic Orchestra.