The NFM Leopoldinum Orchestra is starting the new season in superb company, as it will perform its first concert together with Emmanuel Pahud. The artist born in Geneva, who has been the principal flutist of the Berlin Philharmonic for thirty-two years, is undoubtedly a musician who belongs to the world’s elite. Together with the Wrocław orchestra, he will perform works by Johann Sebastian Bach and his son Carl Philipp Emanuel. The programme will be complemented by the impressive Serenade in C major by Ernst von Dohnányi and a composition by the contemporary American artist Caroline Shaw.

Overshadowed by Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály, the Hungarian composer Ernst von Dohnányi was the aesthetic heir of Romanticism. While writing accessible music using conservative forms, he was not appreciated by critics and today he is an unjustly forgotten artist. The NFM Leopoldinum Orchestra will present his five-movement Serenade, full of ideas, originally intended for string trio. It is considered the first fully original work by this artist. Then we will listen to Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s Flute Concerto in D minor – the most famous of the six works of this genre, created when the “Berlin Bach” served the King of Prussia, Frederick II the Great (the one who recaptured Silesia from Austria and purchased a palace in Wrocław). It was even suspected that this piece was composed to be played by the king, who was fond of playing the flute – but it would have been too difficult for the philosopher king of the Hohenzollern dynasty.

Before we listen to one of Johann Sebastian Bach’s masterpieces, the NFM Leopoldinum Orchestra will present Plan & Elevation by Caroline Shaw – winner of prestigious music awards: the Pulitzer and the Grammy. The inspiration for the composition, which premiered in 2015, was the architecture of the Dumbarton Oaks Palace in Washington. Shaw was commissioned to write a piece celebrating the 75th anniversary of the donation of this19th-century estate to Harvard University. The evening will end with Johann Sebastian Bach’s three-movement Concerto in C minor for oboe and orchestra, composed during his stay in Köthen. Later, already in Leipzig, the master prepared a transcription of the piece for two harpsichords (the original version of the work was lost). The dialogues conducted by the duo of soloists in the piece are the culmination of the concertante technique development, so typical of Baroque music.