Tomorrow’s New Year’s Concert with the Brno Philharmonic is a Celebration of Jubilees

31 December 2018, 1:00
Tomorrow’s New Year’s Concert with the Brno Philharmonic is a Celebration of Jubilees

The traditional New Year’s concert of the Brno Philharmonic will be taking place twice this year. The philharmonic concert will be welcoming the year 2019 and at the same time will also celebrate its 63rd birthday. Tomorrow’s concert will belong to famous jubilees. It is 200 years since the birth of Offenbach, Moniuszka and Suppé, and 175 years since that of Rimsky-Korsakov. There will be famous opera and operetta overtures and Dvořák’s cello concerto in B minor. It will be played by the British soloist Raphaell Wallfisch, cello teacher and conductor Robert Kružík, who will be in charge of the New Year’s concert.

The concert will be opened by soloist Raphaell Wallfisch, one of the most famous of today’s cellists, in Dvořák’s cello concerto. Wallfisch’s family has an interesting story. “His mother, the German Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, survived the holocaust and played on the cello in the women’s ensemble in Auschwitz. His son, the baritone Simon Wallfisch, who has been a soloist in many opera houses, now actively protests against Brexit. Each week he sings with a group of friends in London’s government quarter the Ode to Joy,” said Brno Philharmonic director Marie Kučerová.

In the second half, first we will hear Suppé’s overture to the opera Light Cavalry, which is often played separately and is notorious thanks to the fanfare. It will be followed by the Tsar’s Bride by Rimsky-Korsakov, which is an independent symphonic poem that does not have that much in common with the remainder of the opera, and it is the same following overture to the opera Halka by Moniuzska. The evening will end with the overture to Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld.

Just like last year this year the orchestra will be giving the concert twice. The afternoon programme at 4 p.m. will be a shortened version and the evening one will be in full – that is with the overtures by Moniuzska and Offenbach. It will begin at 8 p.m. and there will be a drink provided to toast the New Year.

Photo from the Brno Philharmonic archive

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