Thu, 16. 12. 2021, 7.00 p.m.

B3 SVÁROVSKÝ | (NEO)CLASSICS

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

The soloist in our December concert tonight where Classicism and Neoclassicism come head to head is the viola player and Bohuslav Martinů Philharmonic member Pavel Březík.

La Clemenza di Tito, Mozart's opera seria in two acts, was written 230 years ago on a commission from the Estates of Bohemia and subsequently performed for the coronation of Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor, as King of Bohemia. The premiere of this musical drama, set in the times of the Roman Empire and originally composed to the libretto by Pietro Metastasio, took place on 6th September 1791 at the Nostitz Theatre (the Estates Theatre) in Prague almost immediately after the coronation. In contrast to the triumphal success in Prague of Don Giovanni, however, La Clemenza di Tito had a cool reception. Mozart, disappointed with the public's lukewarm response, left Prague a week later and was never to return as he died shortly afterwards.

It was almost 18 years earlier that Mozart completed his Symphony No. 25 in his native city of Salzburg. The work, in G minor, can be seen in a certain sense as a watershed in the composer's musical development in that many consider it his first "tragic" symphony. It was written in the Sturm und Drang style as reflected in the use of the minor key, dramatic extremes of emotion and rapid changes of tempo, dynamic and other forms of musical expression.

Bohuslav Martinů's Rhapsody-Concerto for viola and orchestra was written in 1952 on a commission by the Hungarian-American conductor George Szell and the violinist and viola player Jascha Veissi. Work on this imaginative piece in two movements came readily to Martinů as he completed it in a mere month, with its first performance taking place in February 1953 at the Cleveland Severance Hall by Veissi, who also obtained three-year exclusive performance rights, after which the Rhapsody-Concerto became one of the most frequently performed viola concertos of the 20th century ranking alongside other major works of this genre.

The concert concludes with the Bohuslav Martinů Philharmonic playing Sergey Prokofiev's first symphony written in 1917. The work was conceived as a modern reinterpretation of the classical style of Haydn and Mozart, which is why the composer gave it the epithet "Classical" and even today it remains one of the composer's most popular works.