IN THE ORCHESTRA

Have you ever dreamed of leaving your seat in the audience during a concert and experiencing how a musician sees and hears the music in concert? You have an opportunity! The project called In the Orchestra makes it possible. The orchestra will be spread over the entire area of the Besední dom hall and the audience will sit among the musicians. Those who cannot fit in the orchestra area can sit wherever there is an open space - around the orchestra or on the balcony.
For the pilot event of this project, the last two symphonic poems of the cycle Má vlast by the jubilant Bedřich Smetana (1824–1884) were chosen – Tábor and Blaník. Smetanova's Má vlast is a fundamental work of Czech orchestral music, a "symphonic gospel" (in the words of composer Vítězslav Novák), exceptional even in an international context. The themes that Smetana was inspired by resonated significantly in the consciousness of the Czech public and, as universally understandable symbols, played an important role in the national self-awareness process. They were themes of a mythological nature (Šárka, Blaník), historical (Vyšehrad, Tábor) and natural (Vltava, Z české luhů a hájů). Tábor and Blaník, with which the whole cycle ends, are thematically related by the melody of the Hussite song Who are God's Warriors. Each of these two compositions will first be "dissected" in the form of commented samples, and then they will be heard in their entirety.

BEDŘICH SMETANA Tábor and Blaník, symphonic poems from the series Má vlast

Brno Philharmonic
conducted by Debashish Chaudhuri