Thu, 14. 10. 2021, 7.00 p.m.

A1 DŘÍZAL | DVOŘÁK | SUK

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

A new chief conductor, an eminent pianist and an all-Czech programme featuring a world premiere: that, in a nutshell, is our Subscription Cycle A opening concert which starts with a work by Jan Ryant Dřízal, one of the most distinctive members of the generation of young Czech composers. His work Slunovrat, or 'Solstice', is written in the form of a festive overture in neofolklore style, inspired heavily by the iconic paintings of the celebrated artist Joža Uprka. The work, which to some extent amounts to a musical representation of the pagan Midsummer Eve festival, was commissioned by the Bohuslav Martinů Philharmonic and receives its first-ever performance tonight.

Antonín Dvořák's only piano concerto, in contrast, has been performed many times in concert halls almost all over the world since it was written 145 years ago. Dvořák's love of the piano was tellingly reflected in his well-known remark "Good music must always sound well on the piano!". He made a point of not building on the tradition of the Chopin and Lizst piano concertos with their predominance of highly virtuoso passages, opting instead to focus on the musicality of the work as a whole, so although the solo part is not one of dazzling virtuosity, the piece is difficult in its technicality. Dvořák dedicated the work to Eduard Hanslick, the prominent musical critic, theoretician and aesthetic.   

Dvořák's son-in-law Josef Suk was not only an outstanding composer but also an exceptional violinist who played the second violin for more than four decades in the renowned Czech Quartet, which played concerts to great acclaim around almost the whole of Europe. Indeed it was on one of the Quartet's foreign tours that Suk, missing his homeland, took to recollection of the poet Svatopluk Čech's verses celebrating the beauty of Prague, and this prompted him to start composing the symphonic poem subsequently named Praga. The work, combining Suk's distinctive lyricism with dramatic and monumentally sonorous passages, reached its final form in 1904 and represents a unique musical celebration of the "City of 100 Spires".