Thu, 22. 5. 2025, 19.00 hrs

A7 SPRING

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

The last concert in this subscription series welcomes soloist Kateřina Javůrková in a programme conducted by Robert Kružík, featuring works by three composers whose names begin with S - Szymanowski, Strauss and Schumann.

It opens with Karol Szymanowski’s Concert Overture in E Major for large orchestra, written in 1904-05 but with its instrumentation reworked by the composer a few years later. As a young man, Szymanowski - then twenty-three years old - sought to create modern Polish music with a European reach and, apparently inspired by his model Richard Strauss, inserted a quotation from the poem Witeź Włast by the Polish writer and poet Tadeusz Miciński into the score of his Overture. Composed in the Wagnerian-Straussian style, the piece is characterised by its enormous expressiveness, intensity of sound and emotional charge, using a wide palette of orchestral colours.

Richard Strauss's two concertos for horn are undoubtedly staples in every horn player's repertoire, and both are famous for their demanding solo parts. Strauss composed the first of the two in 1883, originally for his father Franz, who was an accomplished virtuoso on the instrument. This masterful composition has great lyrical beauty and many dramatic moments, therefore requiring considerable technical skill and exceptional musical feeling from the soloist.

Robert Schumann wrote his First Symphony at a time of flourishing creativity and personal happiness, unsurprisingly sketching out the work in only four days, and completing the score within a month. Inspired by a poem by Adolph Böttger, Schumann created a score replete with his own musical vision of spring in bud and full bloom, resulting in a joyous and vital atmosphere reflecting the awakening of nature and the optimism of new beginnings.