Samy Moussa: Elysium
Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy: Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 2 in D minor, Op. 40
Arnold Schönberg: Pelleas and Melisande, op. 5
Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (1809–1847), one of the most important German romantics, wrote his first piano concerto in 1832, i.e. at the time of a successfully developing career as a composer and an equally successful career as a piano performer. His contemporaries admired him for his ability to dematerialize and spiritualize the technical difficulties of piano playing. He also applied this principle in his Piano Concerto No. 2 in D minor. This piano concerto took a lot of effort from the composer, as it was intended for the Birmingham Music Festival and could thus impress an English audience. He wrote it in 1837, and although Mendelsson-Bartholdy composed very quickly, he worked on this concerto for half a year. The premiere took place in Birmingham on 21 September 1837, a second performance followed in November at the Leipzig Gewandhaus. Despite the fact that the composer promised a lot from the second piano concerto, it was received rather critically.
In the summer of 1922, Arnold Schönberg (1874–1951), arguably the most important German music maker of the 20th century, came up with the principles of dodecaphony and said to his students: "I have made a discovery that ensures the primacy of German music for the next hundred years." However, this self-confident statement he wasn't far from the truth. Schönberger's work with the twelve-tone system completely changed the compositional approach of the previous three centuries and has influenced musical development to this day. But before the composer made this discovery, he had to go through a complex creative path, the beginning of which is precisely the symphonic poem Pelléas et Mélisande. Vienna at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries represented a real cultural and artistic ferment. Architects (Josef Hoffmann, Adolf Loos), artists (Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Oskar Kokoschka) and playwrights (Hugo von Hofmannsthal) came up with their new concepts. However, the music lagged somewhat behind modern trends. Arnold Schönberg had two kindred spirits in Vienna in addition to his pupils, Gustav Mahler and Alexander von Zemlinsky. In this atmosphere, he began to compose, for the time being, a tonal symphonic poem based on Maurice Maeterlinck's play Pelléas et Mélisande. He completed the work in 1903 and the premiere took place two years later. Like most of Schönberg's works of this period, the piece was not understood by the audience. Today, however, it belongs to the remarkable works heading towards new horizons of 20th century music.
Jiří Zahrádek
