Thu, 22. 4. 2021, 7.00 p.m.

A6 FACES OF THE NORTH

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

Our sixth Subscription Series A concert opens with a rhapsody by the Swedish late-Romantic composer Hugo Alfvén. The piece, called Midsommarvaka or Midsummer Night, is probably this somewhat forgotten composer's best-known work in this country. It is essentially an orchestral fantasy into which Alfvén weaved a number of Swedish folk tunes, resulting in a musical representation of the old Swedish midsummer celebrations which, as in this country, means singing and dancing round the maypole.

The Trumpet Concerto in E-flat major (originally written in the key of E-major) by the Pressburg-born composer Johann Nepomuk Hummel is a key work in the trumpet repertoire and was written for the famous trumpet virtuoso and inventor of the keyed trumpet Anton Weidinger, who gave the work its first performance on New Year's Day, 1804, on the occasion of Hummel's appointment as Kapellmeister at the court of Prince Esterházy. Now, some 200 years later, the piece is still a great favourite with both performers and audiences. Tonight's soloist is the Slovak trumpeter Juraj Bartoš, holder of two Slovak Music Fund awards and a finalist in the Prague Spring International Music Competition.

It was in 1867 that the Norwegian writer Henrik Ibsen wrote Peer Gynt, his five-act play in verse, and the same year asked his fellow Norwegian Edvard Grieg to write the scene music for his play. The resulting musical stage work was very favourably received, and Grieg soon drew on several of the musical parts to produce a work for the concert stage. This took the form of two suites, each in four parts, which have clearly established the composer's popularity around the world.
At the podium directing the Bohuslav Martinů Philharmonic Orchestra is its Chief Conductor Tomáš Brauner.