Thu, 8. 10. 2020, 7.00 p.m.

A1 BEETHOVEN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES

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

In 2020 the world of culture will be marking the 250th anniversary of the birth of Ludwig van Beethoven, one of the most outstanding figures in the history of music, whose work had a profound influence on subsequent generations of European composers and on two of his contemporaries, so it is his work that features in our opening Subscription Series A concert. The programme opens with Beethoven's King Stephen overture written in 1811 for the inauguration of the theatre in Pešt, and the reference is, of course, to King Stephen I, founder of the Hungarian monarchy. The work, incidentally, was written while the composer was staying at a spa in Teplice, North Bohemia.
It was in the same year that Carl Maria von Weber wrote two clarinet concertos which very quickly found their way onto the world stage and still form part of the core repertoire for most clarinetists. Tonight we will hear the second concerto in E-flat major played by Jan Mach, member of the Czech Philharmonic and a winner of many performing artists' competitions.

The evening concludes with the Fourth Symphony by Franz Schubert, a lifelong admirer of Beethoven. Schubert, a native of Vienna, wrote the piece to which he gave the epithet "Tragic" when he was only 19 but never lived to see it played in public, as it did not receive its first complete performance until more than 20 years after the composer's death.

At the podium for tonight's concert is Jakub Klecker, Chief Conductor of the Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra based in Olomouc.