Event Type : Czech Republic

Programme
Antonín Dvořák: Piano Concerto in G minor, Op. 33
Hector Berlioz: Symphonie fantastique, Op. 14

Performing with
Daniil Trifonov piano
Czech Philharmonic

Superlatives follow pianist Daniil Trifonov whenever he appears on stage. His concerto performances with the Czech Philharmonic have made the same impression on Prague audiences as he has made on critics worldwide. Trifonov has appeared twice in recent years with the Czech Philharmonic: in September 2020, he opened the new season with Semyon Bychkov in Shostakovich’s Concerto for Piano, Trumpet, and Strings, and in April 2023, he performed Scriabin’s Piano Concerto with Jakub Hrůša. The concerts of Trifonov were of such artistic excellence that the Czech Philharmonic’s management approached him with the invitation to be its 2024/2025 season Artist-in-Residence, and he accepted!

Artists-in-Residence appear repeatedly during a season. Daniil Trifonov will play at the Rudolfinum as part of the opening season concert, and the same programme will be repeated in Bratislava. In December 2024, he goes on tour with the Czech Philharmonic to New York’s Carnegie Hall and Toronto’s Koerner Hall. For these North American concerts, he will play the Piano Concerto by Antonín Dvořák, chosen to celebrate the 2024 Year of Czech Music. To contrast his grand scale performances with the Orchestra, Trifonov will also give a solo piano recital on 29 September at the Rudolfinum.

The Czech Philharmonic’s Chief Conductor is naturally a part of the opening concerts as well. Semyon Bychkov has chosen a work he has not yet performed with his Orchestra, although it is an important part of his repertoire, and is both very admired and popular. “For the artist, his beloved herself becomes a melody, like an idée fixe that he encounters again and again and hears everywhere,” wrote Hector Berlioz in the introduction to his Symphonie fantastique.

The subtitle An Episode from the Life of an Artist is meant seriously. The youthful Berlioz was inspired by (if not obsessed with) the actress Harriet Smithson who played all the major Shakespearean roles in London, and when she made guest appearances in Paris in 1827, she completely captivated the composer’s heart. Although not all love stories end the way they do in romantic novels, Smithson ultimately became Berlioz’s wife and together, they had a son.

The beginning of Berlioz and Smithson’s relationship perfectly reflects the Romantic period’s ideas about love, which today seem rather frightening. Berlioz had in fact never seen Smithson anywhere other than on stage, but that did not stop him from sending her reams of letters. He moved into a flat where he could observe her returning home, and he would watch her until she went to sleep. The actress ignored his attempts at seduction until a mutual acquaintance invited her to a concert which featured the continuation to the Symphonie fantastique: a composition titled Lélio. Smithson realised that the symphony and its “sequel” were about her, and the rest is history as they say at least until the Shakespearean actress began to feel jealous about her husband’s success, and the fact that his attention had begun to turn towards a certain French opera singer… But why let that stop us from enjoying the Symphonie fantastique?

Programme
Antonín Dvořák: Piano Concerto in G minor, Op. 33
Hector Berlioz: Symphonie fantastique, Op. 14

Performing with
Daniil Trifonov piano
Czech Philharmonic

Superlatives follow pianist Daniil Trifonov whenever he appears on stage. His concerto performances with the Czech Philharmonic have made the same impression on Prague audiences as he has made on critics worldwide. Trifonov has appeared twice in recent years with the Czech Philharmonic: in September 2020, he opened the new season with Semyon Bychkov in Shostakovich’s Concerto for Piano, Trumpet, and Strings, and in April 2023, he performed Scriabin’s Piano Concerto with Jakub Hrůša. The concerts of Trifonov were of such artistic excellence that the Czech Philharmonic’s management approached him with the invitation to be its 2024/2025 season Artist-in-Residence, and he accepted!

Artists-in-Residence appear repeatedly during a season. Daniil Trifonov will play at the Rudolfinum as part of the opening season concert, and the same programme will be repeated in Bratislava. In December 2024, he goes on tour with the Czech Philharmonic to New York’s Carnegie Hall and Toronto’s Koerner Hall. For these North American concerts, he will play the Piano Concerto by Antonín Dvořák, chosen to celebrate the 2024 Year of Czech Music. To contrast his grand scale performances with the Orchestra, Trifonov will also give a solo piano recital on 29 September at the Rudolfinum.

The Czech Philharmonic’s Chief Conductor is naturally a part of the opening concerts as well. Semyon Bychkov has chosen a work he has not yet performed with his Orchestra, although it is an important part of his repertoire, and is both very admired and popular. “For the artist, his beloved herself becomes a melody, like an idée fixe that he encounters again and again and hears everywhere,” wrote Hector Berlioz in the introduction to his Symphonie fantastique.

The subtitle An Episode from the Life of an Artist is meant seriously. The youthful Berlioz was inspired by (if not obsessed with) the actress Harriet Smithson who played all the major Shakespearean roles in London, and when she made guest appearances in Paris in 1827, she completely captivated the composer’s heart. Although not all love stories end the way they do in romantic novels, Smithson ultimately became Berlioz’s wife and together, they had a son.

The beginning of Berlioz and Smithson’s relationship perfectly reflects the Romantic period’s ideas about love, which today seem rather frightening. Berlioz had in fact never seen Smithson anywhere other than on stage, but that did not stop him from sending her reams of letters. He moved into a flat where he could observe her returning home, and he would watch her until she went to sleep. The actress ignored his attempts at seduction until a mutual acquaintance invited her to a concert which featured the continuation to the Symphonie fantastique: a composition titled Lélio. Smithson realised that the symphony and its “sequel” were about her, and the rest is history as they say at least until the Shakespearean actress began to feel jealous about her husband’s success, and the fact that his attention had begun to turn towards a certain French opera singer… But why let that stop us from enjoying the Symphonie fantastique?

Programme
Johannes Brahms (arr. Detlev Glanert): Four Serious Songs, Op. 121, arranged for baritone and orchestra (2004)
Johannes Brahms: Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 73

Performing with
Christian Immler, bass-baritone
Czech Philharmonic

Johannes Brahms’s Symphony No. 2 which premiered in 1877, dates from the period when the composer was firmly establishing himself as a prominent figure of Viennese musical life. Brahms described the work as “pastoral”, certainly not without reference to the Sixth Symphony of his role model: Ludwig van Beethoven, who was not only a great source of inspiration for Brahms but also a figure whose legacy long challenged his confidence in his own compositions. The work’s mood comes across as cheerful, and even the sadder moments feel comforting. Nonetheless, Brahms wrote to his publisher that his symphony “is so melancholy that you will not be able to bear it. I have never written anything so sad, and the score must come out in mourning.” This of course might have been meant ironically.

The first movement’s broadly arched main theme is one of Brahms’s most appealing melodies. The second movement continues in a similar vein while turning inwards even further. The scherzo, in the character of a classical minuet, is an inventive and artisanal evocation of serenade-like lightness. The final movement departs from the overall mood of calm, but even here one finds moments of repose. This formally balanced symphony is captivating with its succinct rhythms and orchestration in which Brahms makes use of his favourite colours in the French horns, luminous strings, and woodwinds.
Brahms’s Four Serious Songs were written near the end of his life when he was grieving the death of his friend Clara Schumann. He had also begun to feel the effects of an illness that would soon prove to be fatal. At this difficult time, he turned to Luther’s German translation of the Bible, and as he had already done in his German Requiem, focused more on passages that are existential rather than explicitly religious. The first three songs explore the finite and transient nature of human life, and the last offers listeners a fuller view of humankind’s fate.

In these performances, the songs will be heard in an orchestral arrangement by Detlev Glanert who has framed them with four preludes and postludes, creating a continuous musical flow to enhance the original work. The soloist is Christian Immler who returns to Prague following the world premiere of Glanert’s Prague Symphony with the Czech Philharmonic and Semyon Bychkov in 2022.

Programme
Johannes Brahms (arr. Detlev Glanert): Four Serious Songs, Op. 121, arranged for baritone and orchestra (2004)
Johannes Brahms: Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 73

Performing with
Christian Immler, bass-baritone
Czech Philharmonic

Johannes Brahms’s Symphony No. 2 which premiered in 1877, dates from the period when the composer was firmly establishing himself as a prominent figure of Viennese musical life. Brahms described the work as “pastoral”, certainly not without reference to the Sixth Symphony of his role model: Ludwig van Beethoven, who was not only a great source of inspiration for Brahms but also a figure whose legacy long challenged his confidence in his own compositions. The work’s mood comes across as cheerful, and even the sadder moments feel comforting. Nonetheless, Brahms wrote to his publisher that his symphony “is so melancholy that you will not be able to bear it. I have never written anything so sad, and the score must come out in mourning.” This of course might have been meant ironically.

The first movement’s broadly arched main theme is one of Brahms’s most appealing melodies. The second movement continues in a similar vein while turning inwards even further. The scherzo, in the character of a classical minuet, is an inventive and artisanal evocation of serenade-like lightness. The final movement departs from the overall mood of calm, but even here one finds moments of repose. This formally balanced symphony is captivating with its succinct rhythms and orchestration in which Brahms makes use of his favourite colours in the French horns, luminous strings, and woodwinds.
Brahms’s Four Serious Songs were written near the end of his life when he was grieving the death of his friend Clara Schumann. He had also begun to feel the effects of an illness that would soon prove to be fatal. At this difficult time, he turned to Luther’s German translation of the Bible, and as he had already done in his German Requiem, focused more on passages that are existential rather than explicitly religious. The first three songs explore the finite and transient nature of human life, and the last offers listeners a fuller view of humankind’s fate.

In these performances, the songs will be heard in an orchestral arrangement by Detlev Glanert who has framed them with four preludes and postludes, creating a continuous musical flow to enhance the original work. The soloist is Christian Immler who returns to Prague following the world premiere of Glanert’s Prague Symphony with the Czech Philharmonic and Semyon Bychkov in 2022.

Programme
Johannes Brahms (arr. Detlev Glanert): Four Serious Songs, Op. 121, arranged for baritone and orchestra (2004)
Johannes Brahms: Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 73

Performing with
Christian Immler, bass-baritone
Czech Philharmonic

Johannes Brahms’s Symphony No. 2 which premiered in 1877, dates from the period when the composer was firmly establishing himself as a prominent figure of Viennese musical life. Brahms described the work as “pastoral”, certainly not without reference to the Sixth Symphony of his role model: Ludwig van Beethoven, who was not only a great source of inspiration for Brahms but also a figure whose legacy long challenged his confidence in his own compositions. The work’s mood comes across as cheerful, and even the sadder moments feel comforting. Nonetheless, Brahms wrote to his publisher that his symphony “is so melancholy that you will not be able to bear it. I have never written anything so sad, and the score must come out in mourning.” This of course might have been meant ironically.

The first movement’s broadly arched main theme is one of Brahms’s most appealing melodies. The second movement continues in a similar vein while turning inwards even further. The scherzo, in the character of a classical minuet, is an inventive and artisanal evocation of serenade-like lightness. The final movement departs from the overall mood of calm, but even here one finds moments of repose. This formally balanced symphony is captivating with its succinct rhythms and orchestration in which Brahms makes use of his favourite colours in the French horns, luminous strings, and woodwinds.
Brahms’s Four Serious Songs were written near the end of his life when he was grieving the death of his friend Clara Schumann. He had also begun to feel the effects of an illness that would soon prove to be fatal. At this difficult time, he turned to Luther’s German translation of the Bible, and as he had already done in his German Requiem, focused more on passages that are existential rather than explicitly religious. The first three songs explore the finite and transient nature of human life, and the last offers listeners a fuller view of humankind’s fate.

In these performances, the songs will be heard in an orchestral arrangement by Detlev Glanert who has framed them with four preludes and postludes, creating a continuous musical flow to enhance the original work. The soloist is Christian Immler who returns to Prague following the world premiere of Glanert’s Prague Symphony with the Czech Philharmonic and Semyon Bychkov in 2022.

Programme
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 25 in C major, K 503
Gustav Mahler: Symphony No. 5 in C sharp minor

Performing with
Kristian Bezuidenhout piano
Czech Philharmonic

If a Mahler symphony opens with a trumpet solo, one can be sure that one is listening to the Fifth. And this is not the only well-known motif from this beautiful work which has etched itself in the memories of audiences, including, of course, through its use by the great Italian director Luchino Visconti in his Death in Venice, a filmic adaptation of Thomas Mann’s existentialist novel of the same name.

Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 in C sharp minor has continued to inspire and thrill since its premiere 120 years ago in Cologne, so it is no surprise that the Prague public gave an exceptionally enthusiastic welcome to Semyon Bychkov’s carefully prepared performances in 2021. As the British music critic Norman Lebrecht said of the Orchestra’s recording of the Fifth with its Chief Conductor, “Semyon Bychkov and the Czech Philharmonic are setting the pace for Mahler on record in this decade… I can find no flaw in this production. It is as gripping a Mahler Fifth as you will hear anywhere and that burnished Czech sound will linger long in the ear. The orchestra is immeasurably more virtuosic these days than it was in its previous Mahler cycle, nearly half a century ago with Vaclav Neumann, yet its ethos in Mahler remains inimitable.”

In the accompanying performances of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 25, Australian pianist Kristian Bezuidenhout deserves no less attention. A world traveller based in London, he is a respected figure in the field of historically informed music making focusing on the era preceding Romanticism which reached its zenith with Mahler. To be more precise, Bezuidenhout prefers to describe his approach as “historically inspired”, meaning that he is not striving for historical “purism”, but for authenticity in terms of his own artistic conception of a work. It is an approach for which he has already received much acclaim including for his biggest recording project to date – Mozart’s complete piano music for Harmonia Mundi – which has won several international awards.

Programme
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 25 in C major, K 503
Gustav Mahler: Symphony No. 5 in C sharp minor

Performing with
Kristian Bezuidenhout piano
Czech Philharmonic

If a Mahler symphony opens with a trumpet solo, one can be sure that one is listening to the Fifth. And this is not the only well-known motif from this beautiful work which has etched itself in the memories of audiences, including, of course, through its use by the great Italian director Luchino Visconti in his Death in Venice, a filmic adaptation of Thomas Mann’s existentialist novel of the same name.

Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 in C sharp minor has continued to inspire and thrill since its premiere 120 years ago in Cologne, so it is no surprise that the Prague public gave an exceptionally enthusiastic welcome to Semyon Bychkov’s carefully prepared performances in 2021. As the British music critic Norman Lebrecht said of the Orchestra’s recording of the Fifth with its Chief Conductor, “Semyon Bychkov and the Czech Philharmonic are setting the pace for Mahler on record in this decade… I can find no flaw in this production. It is as gripping a Mahler Fifth as you will hear anywhere and that burnished Czech sound will linger long in the ear. The orchestra is immeasurably more virtuosic these days than it was in its previous Mahler cycle, nearly half a century ago with Vaclav Neumann, yet its ethos in Mahler remains inimitable.”

In the accompanying performances of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 25, Australian pianist Kristian Bezuidenhout deserves no less attention. A world traveller based in London, he is a respected figure in the field of historically informed music making focusing on the era preceding Romanticism which reached its zenith with Mahler. To be more precise, Bezuidenhout prefers to describe his approach as “historically inspired”, meaning that he is not striving for historical “purism”, but for authenticity in terms of his own artistic conception of a work. It is an approach for which he has already received much acclaim including for his biggest recording project to date – Mozart’s complete piano music for Harmonia Mundi – which has won several international awards.

Programme
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 25 in C major, K 503
Gustav Mahler: Symphony No. 5 in C sharp minor

Performing with
Kristian Bezuidenhout piano
Czech Philharmonic

If a Mahler symphony opens with a trumpet solo, one can be sure that one is listening to the Fifth. And this is not the only well-known motif from this beautiful work which has etched itself in the memories of audiences, including, of course, through its use by the great Italian director Luchino Visconti in his Death in Venice, a filmic adaptation of Thomas Mann’s existentialist novel of the same name.

Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 in C sharp minor has continued to inspire and thrill since its premiere 120 years ago in Cologne, so it is no surprise that the Prague public gave an exceptionally enthusiastic welcome to Semyon Bychkov’s carefully prepared performances in 2021. As the British music critic Norman Lebrecht said of the Orchestra’s recording of the Fifth with its Chief Conductor, “Semyon Bychkov and the Czech Philharmonic are setting the pace for Mahler on record in this decade… I can find no flaw in this production. It is as gripping a Mahler Fifth as you will hear anywhere and that burnished Czech sound will linger long in the ear. The orchestra is immeasurably more virtuosic these days than it was in its previous Mahler cycle, nearly half a century ago with Vaclav Neumann, yet its ethos in Mahler remains inimitable.”

In the accompanying performances of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 25, Australian pianist Kristian Bezuidenhout deserves no less attention. A world traveller based in London, he is a respected figure in the field of historically informed music making focusing on the era preceding Romanticism which reached its zenith with Mahler. To be more precise, Bezuidenhout prefers to describe his approach as “historically inspired”, meaning that he is not striving for historical “purism”, but for authenticity in terms of his own artistic conception of a work. It is an approach for which he has already received much acclaim including for his biggest recording project to date – Mozart’s complete piano music for Harmonia Mundi – which has won several international awards.