The Brno Philharmonic will embark on its 69th season this Sunday. With this concert, principal conductor Dennis Russell Davies will begin his seventh year at the helm of the orchestra. The programme commemorates the anniversaries of two giants of the Romantic era: the founder of Czech national music, Bedřich Smetana, and the prominent Austrian symphonist Anton Bruckner, born 200 years ago this year.
"Before coming to Brno, Dennis Russell Davies was the leader of the Bruckner Orchestra in Linz for fifteen years. Through frequent performances of Bruckner's works there, he has deeply penetrated not only his music, but also its interpretative specifics and pitfalls. He is a renowned Bruckner conductor and every performance of a Bruckner composition is a powerful experience," said Marie Kučerová, director of the Brno Philharmonic. She added that Davies has already conducted the First, Fourth, Fifth and Sixth symphonies in Brno, and it is now the turn of the Seventh. The concert kicking off the 69th season will take place on Sunday, 15 September 2024 at 7:00 p.m. at the Janáček Theatre.
The gala evening, as well as the entire season, will open with two symphonic poems by Bedřich Smetana: Hakon Jarl and Richard III, clear evidence of the composer’s admiration and affection for neo-Romantic programme music. "He found a strong support in Franz Liszt, who was already an international authority on music at that time, and decided to follow his example and start composing symphonic poems, which were a new thing in the world of European music at that time. If Smetana had previously been a composer of mostly smaller piano pieces, he then turned his attention to the orchestra and new large forms," said Vítězslav Mikeš, dramaturg of the Brno Philharmonic.
In Richard III, the author was inspired by Shakespearean themes; Hakon Jarl is based on a drama by Danish author Adam Öhlenschläger about the struggle between Christianity and paganism, which he musically transformed into a struggle between good and evil, freedom and oppression. "I especially fell in love with Smetana's music after I came to the Czech Republic and I’ve conducted or played several of his works not only here but also in Austria and Germany. Another great experience for me was the summer trip I spent visiting all the places in Bohemia from Smetana's My Fatherland," said Chief Conductor Davies.
Bruckner's Symphony No. 7, which will be performed in the second half of the evening, took the composer from a reticent and ridiculed creator to become an internationally important representative of contemporary musical thought. The ovation that erupted after the première in Leipzig reportedly lasted for more than a quarter of an hour. At the Viennese performance, it is said that the composer had to go around being thanked four or five times after each movement. The audience included the king of waltzes, Johann Strauss the Younger, who after hearing the work sent Bruckner a telegram saying: "I am very moved, it was the greatest experience of my life."
The adagio of the second movement is seen by connoisseurs as a memorial service for Richard Wagner, whom Bruckner admired. "The sombre basic theme is presented by Wagnerian tubas, instruments designed at Wagner's instigation and which became an integral part of the late Wagner orchestra," Mikeš noted. Even with the stormy Scherzo, Bruckner did well with the non-musical idea of watching the burning of Vienna's Ringtheater from his apartment window, including the laying out of the dead bodies on the pavement before they were taken away. Visconti's 1954 film Passion also played a part in the modern popularity of the Seventh Symphony.
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