Thu, 20. 10. 2022, 7.00 p.m.

HRŮŠA / FBM

Venue: Zlín Congress Centre  |  Organizer: Filharmonie Bohuslava Martinů, o.p.s.  |  Price: 340 / 290 / 240

Our Harmonia Moraviae final concert welcomes a truly exceptional figure in classical music not just in this country, but on the world stage. He is Jakub Hrůša, our Chief Conductor from 2005-2008, who returns to lead the Orchestra through a programme of works by Rachmaninov and Zdeněk Fibich together with another leading light on the Czech musical scene, the acclaimed pianist Ivo Kahánek.

Rachmaninov wrote his third piano concerto in 1909 for his coming US tour and showed considerable business acumen in terms of attracting audiences to his concerts by publicly billing the piece as created "specially for America". The work, premiered in November 1909 in New York with the composer himself as soloist, is considered to be one of the most technically challenging pieces ever written for piano requiring, as it does, great physical strength and stamina to play, giving rise to comments by some pianists comparing it to climbing Mount Everest.

Zdeněk Fibich's three symphonies are among the best works of Czech music in the second half of the 19th century. He had been working on them even as a young man but destroyed the first versions of two symphonies. His first surviving symphony in F major was six years in the making and finally completed in 1883. This noteworthy work by Fibich, essentially a Romantic at heart, displays a spirited playfulness and melodic touches in its depiction of motifs from the natural world brimming with youthful elan and vibrant optimism.