The Brno Philharmonic, the NFM Choir and excellent soloists under the baton of the outstanding conductor Dennis Russel Davies will present works by two Czech composers: Antonín Dvořák and Leoš Janáček. Founded in 1956, the Filharmonie Brno is an orchestra with very strong ties to the music of Janáček, who lived in Brno for many years, where he was Director of the conservatory. The first Artistic Director of the Filharmonie Brno was his student, the excellent conductor Břetislav Bakala.
Symphony No. 7 in D minor by Antonín Dvořák opens a trilogy of late, most popular works in his oeuvre. The piece, written in a traditional four-movement frame, was commissioned by the London Philharmonic Society, for which Beethoven once wrote his Ninth Symphony. Aware of how great a distinction he had received, Dvořák created one of his best compositions. The symphony is distinguished by its dark colour and dramatic character. Work on the piece progressed smoothly, and the composer conducted the first performance of the symphony in April 1885 in London.
The second part of the concert will feature a late work by Leoš Janáček: The Glagolitic Mass for orchestra, choir, organ and four solo voices. It was composed in 1926 to celebrate the tenth anniversary of Czechoslovakia’s independence. The outer sections of the mass are performed by the orchestra, one is for solo organ, and the remaining movements are vocal-instrumental Old Church Slavic version of the mass text also used in the Catholic tradition. The short, lapidary, obsessively repeated motifs, the use of extreme registers, the emphasis on brass instruments, the extraordinary drama and vitality of this music made Milan Kundera say that it is “more an orgy than a mass”. This claim is well grounded – the composer confessed that while writing this work he was inspired by wild nature, and his relatives reported that he would enter a church only to shelter from the rain.