Matouš Zukal / piano

Matouš Zukal / piano

Program:
Bedrich Smetana
Sonata for piano in G minor
Vítězslava Kaprálová
April Preludes Op. 13
Bohuslav Martinů
Eight Preludes H 181

The piano sonata in G minor is Bedřich Smetana's first extensive cyclic work. Like every early work, it reveals the strongest compositional patterns of its then only twenty-two-year-old author. Incidentally, however, it also demonstrates Smetana's exceptionally high technical level, in which he wanted to introduce himself both as a composer and as a concert pianist. He composed it at the end of his three-year study of composition (and perhaps piano) at the famous music school of his blind teacher Josef Proksch. The fact that Smetana did not distance himself from his Piano Sonata even in his later years is evidenced, among other things, by the fact that he used the entire 87-measure opening part of it as the main theme of the finale of his famous Piano Trio in G minor composed in the fall of 1855, i.e. eight years later under the impression of the death of his daughter Bedřiška. This gives the theme of metamorphoses another dimension, when its originator in a completely different context is the author of the work himself.
Vítězslava Kaprálová also died prematurely, but despite only 25 years of life, she left a remarkable legacy as a composer. April Preludes Op. 13 was composed during her studies in Paris with Bohuslav Martinů, whose contemporary jazz-influenced Eight Preludes from 1929 will close the concert.