Thu, 1. 10. 2020, 7.00 p.m.
B1 DVOŘÁK ERBEN
Venue: Zlín Congress Centre | Organizer: Filharmonie Bohuslava Martinů, o.p.s. |
18.15 PRE-CONCERT TALK
ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK
The Water Goblin, Op. 107
The Noonday Witch, Op. 108
Where art thou, father? from the cantata The Spectre's Bride (Svatební košile), Op. 69
O Virgin mother, gracious be, from the cantata The Spectre's Bride,, Op. 69
The Golden Spinning Wheel, Op. 109
PAVLA VYKOPALOVÁ, soprano
BOHUSLAV MARTINŮ PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA
PETR ALTRICHTER, conductor
Autumn 2020 will mark the 150th anniversary of the death of Karel Jaromír Erben, the writer, poet and translator, and one of the most important figures of the Czech National Revival. His work as one of the foremost Czech literary Romantics has repeatedly inspired many Czech artists, and Kytice (Bouquet), his collection of poems, proved immensely popular in this country.
Antonín Dvořák was a great admirer of Erben's work, shown by the fact that in 1871 he set some of Erben's poems to music. It was 13 years later that Dvořák drew on Erben's poem Svatební košile to produced a cantata of the same name, and in 1896 he set to music four additional pieces from Kytice (The Water Goblin, The Noonday Witch, The Golden Spinning Wheel and The Wild Dove) which he developed into separate symphonic poems. Dvořák's "Erben" poems provide clear evidence of his liking for folk wisdom and fairy tale which can be found in his late creative period, and they also represent his most ambitious undertaking in the programme music genre.
It comes as no surprise, therefore, that many musicologists posit these poems as a sort of counterbalance to Smetana's My Homeland.
The two pieces from Dvořák's The Spectre's Bride are sung by Pavla Vykopalová, member of the Janáček Opera House in Brno and regular guest with the Prague National Theatre and State Opera. At the podium for this performance is the acclaimed conductor Petr Altrichter.