Le Nozze di Figaro Overture, an improvisation on the Capriccio in A minor by Paganini, the Blue Rondo à la Turk from Dave Brubeck’s groundbreaking jazz album Time Out – all in original arrangements by the extraordinary Janoska Ensemble – are only part of the programme of the New Year’s Gala. The band has gained great fame and popularity thanks to the art of improvisation, which is based on the most popular works of classical music, but not only that – the performers also improvise on jazz themes. The performance of the Janoska Ensemble and the NFM Leopoldinum Orchestra is a recipe for a musical celebration in style!
The humorous four-act opera The Marriage of Figaro was written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1786, and the author of the libretto was the Italian writer Lorenzo Da Ponte. It was based on a play by Pierre Beaumarchais. The class conflicts presented in it were scandalous for the authorities at that time, but Da Ponte reworked the text and removed political threads, which won the emperor’s favour for the whole enterprise (this happened even before Mozart composed the music!). The composer received 450 florins for writing The Marriage of Figaro – it was three times his annual salary as a court musician in Salzburg! But music lovers around the world know that the opera was more than worth the price.
The expressive, wistful Melodie für Melody is the work of the violinist Roman Janoska, while the Blue Rondo à la Turk is a jazz piece by Dave Brubeck, originally performed by his quartet and taken from the album Time Out from 1959. The first part of the concert will end with the Paganinoska, i.e. improvisations by members of the Janoska Ensemble on the theme of the famous Capriccio in A minor op. 1 no. 24 by Niccolò Paganini. The catchy theme of the latter work has fascinated composers for a long time. Variations on the piece were written by, among others, Johannes Brahms, Ferenc Liszt, Sergei Rachmaninoff, as well as Polish artists – Karol Szymanowski, Witold Lutosławski and Stanisław Skrowaczewski. The concert will be a unique opportunity to get to know the Janoska Ensemble’s version!
The second part of the concert will surely delight lovers of emotional complexity and ambiguity. After the intermission, we will first hear the Rumba for Amadeus by pianist František Janoska, a work based on the themes from Mozart’s sinister Concerto in D minor. How can you combine the exuberant social dance with the sombre mood of Wolfgang Amadeus’s composition? Well, you can find out during the Gala! The emotiveness will be further enhanced by the next work in the programme – the expressive tango Oblivion, one of the most famous pieces by Astor Piazzolla, who went down in history as the creator of tango nuevo. The evening will end with the performance of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Concerto for two violins in D minor BWV 1043. Researchers consider it one of the greatest masterpieces of the Baroque era and one of the best works of the Leipzig cantor.