Wed, 22. 3. 2023, 7.00 p.m.

B6 FIALA / 80

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

March 2023 marks a major milestone birthday for Professor Petr Fiala, the founder, managing director and choral director of the Brno-based Czech Philharmonic Choir, which is one of the most prestigious choirs in Europe, and our concert tonight is above all a tribute to this outstanding artist who fully deserves his place among the most eminent figures in choral music today.

The concert opens with Professor Fiala's own Stabat mater, a major vocal-instrumental work for solo viola, mixed choir and orchestra written in 2017. The work, dedicated to Jiří Bělohlávek, the former Chief Conductor and Music Director of the Czech Philharmonic, was originally due to receive its premiere last year under Jakub Hrůša with the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra but was postponed because of the Coronavirus restrictions. The work is thus receiving its world premiere in this concert in Zlín in March 2023.

The next piece is Brahms' Schicksalslied or Song of Destiny for choir and orchestra, a musical setting of a poem by the German poet Friedrich Hölderlin that many rank as among Brahms' best work. Begun in 1868, it was only completed three years later evidently as a result of the composer's well-known indecisiveness.

Our final piece this evening is another vocal-instrumental work, Antonín Dvořák's glorious Te Deum written for solo soprano and baritone, mixed choir and orchestra and commissioned by the then director of the New York Conservatory Jeanette Thurber. The work was to be a cantata written in 1892 to mark the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' discovery of America, and also to celebrate Dvořák's arrival there to take up his work. The solo parts are sung by the soprano Jana Sibera and baritone Lukáš Bařák, and tonight's conductor is Robert Kružík.