Principal guest conductor of the Czech Philharmonic, Jakub Hrůša, leads the Orchestra on a 5-concert tour, taking in performances in Hamburg, the Lucerne Festival, the Rheingau Festival and the BBC Proms. The programme is largely focused on works by Dvořák, with pieces by Suk, Janácek and Vítězslava Kaprálová also featured.
The British magazine Gramophone has named the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra one of the six contenders for the Orchestra of the Year 2024 award. This award – which recognises ensembles that have made exceptional recordings in the past year – is the only Gramophone Award decided by public vote. The result will be announced at a ceremony in London on 4th October.
Jakub Hrůša has most recently completed a residency at the Edinburgh Festival with the Bamberg Symphony of which he is Chief Conductor. He is also Music Director at the Royal Opera House, and Principal Guest Conductor of the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome. Hrůša has in recent years appeared as a guest-conductor, leading the Vienna Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic, Bavarian Radio Symphony and Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and, in the US, the New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, Chicago Symphony and The Cleveland Orchestra. As a conductor of opera, he has led productions for the Salzburg Festival, Vienna State Opera, Opéra National de Paris, Zurich Opera, Frankfurt Opera and Glyndebourne Festival and he recently won praise from critics for his recent US operatic debut with Janácek’s Jenůfa.
The Czech Philharmonic tour starts in Hamburg on 21st August at the Elbphilharmonie, with Antonin Dvořák’s Cello Concerto – in which British cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason is the soloist – and Josef Suk’s funeral symphony Asrael.
Sheku Kanneh-Mason, whose first success was winning the 2016 BBC Young Musician competition, followed this with his recording of the Elgar Cello Concerto in 2020, a recording which reached No 8 in the main UK Official Album Chart – the first ever cellist to reach the UK Top 10. During the 22/23 season, he was Artist in Residence with the Philharmonia Orchestra in London, and has since appeared with many of the major orchestras across Europe and in the United States.
Dvořák started writing his Cello Concerto in B minor, Op 104, in New York in November 1894, where he’d signed a new contract with the National Conservatory. Dvořák had for some time wanted to write a work for his friend Hanuš Wihan, cellist of the Bohemian Quartet. Just as Dvořák had encouraged violinist Joseph Joachim to give him advice and to make revisions to the Violin Concerto of 1879, he now leaned on Wihan for technical assistance with the Cello Concerto. Due to a series of misunderstandings over dates, Wihan was unable to give the premiere of the Cello Concerto which had been dedicated to him. The concerto was completed in February 1895, and given its world premiere in London on March 19, 1896, with Dvořák himself leading the orchestra of the Philharmonic Society, and Leo Stern as soloist. Wihan played the piece for the first time in 1899, with the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra under Willem Mengelberg.
Josef Suk began writing Asrael, his funeral symphony in C minor, Op 27, in honour of his teacher and father-in-law Antonín Dvořák in January 1905. Dvořák had died the previous year, and this symphony was intended as a commemoration of his life. Suk’s wife Otilie (who was Dvořák’s daughter) however died in 1905, and the symphony, whilst dealing with almost unendurable suffering, also tells of overcoming this suffering through solace and hope. It premiered on 3rd February, 1907 at the Prague National Theatre, in a performance conducted by Karel Kovařovic.
The tour continues with a performance at the Lucerne Festival on Friday, 23rd August, where Jakub Hrůša and the Czech Philharmonic will repeat their performance of the Dvořák Cello Concerto with Sheku Kanneh-Mason.
The programme will also feature the trilogy of overtures which Dvořák wrote between March and July of 1891. These overtures premiered at the Rudolfinum on 28th April, 1892, conducted by the composer. They were originally known as Nature, Life and Love, but the composer later decided to divide the trilogy into three separate works, sharing common ideas, but united by nature in all her forms. They are now known as In Nature’s Realm, Op 91, Carnival, Op 92, and Othello, Op 93.
The next engagement on the tour is a visit to the Rheingau Music Festival on Sunday, 25th August. Dvořák’s Cello Concerto is again the main work on the programme, but will be played by Russian cellist Anastasia Kobekina, described by Le Figaro as an “… unrivalled musician”, and by Tagesspiegel as an artist who “…. plays with gorgeous elegance and effortlessly wide lines”. Ms Kobekina has most recently performed with orchestras such as the Tonhalle Orchestra in Zurich, Orchester National du Capitole de Toulouse, the Gstaad Festival Orchestra and the Orchester National de Belgique.
The trilogy In Nature’s Realm, Carnival and Othello will complete the programme.
There will be two appearances at the BBC Proms in London’s Royal Albert Hall. On Tuesday, 27th August, Jakub Hrůša will lead the Czech Philharmonic in Dvořák’s Cello Concerto, with guest soloist Anastasia Kobekina, and Suk’s funeral symphony, Asrael.
The final concert of the tour takes place on Wednesday 28th August at the Proms, featuring three works – the Military Sinfonietta by Vítězslava Kaprálová, Dvořák’s Piano Concerto and the Glagolitic Mass by Leoš Janáček.
Vítězslava Kaprálová was a 20th century Czech composer who wrote an impressive 50 works before her untimely death in 1940 at the age of 25. Kaprálová wrote in a variety of styles, from folk-like to Stravinsky-inspired neo-classicism. Her Military Sinfonietta, which she started sketching in early 1936, is a single movement piece for large orchestra which won the Smetana Award, and was premiered by the Czech Philharmonic under her direction at the Lucerne Hall in Prague on 26th November, 1937.
This is followed by Dvořák’s Piano Concerto in G minor, Op 33, the only one that he wrote, and which he dedicated to leading music critic of his day, Eduard Hanslick, in appreciation of his attention to Dvořák’s work. Written in 1876, the concerto was noted for the technical difficulty of the dazzling virtuoso passages – although Dvořák was not a piano virtuoso – and was the first of the three concertos he wrote, the other two being his decidedly more popular Violin and Cello concertos. It premiered in Prague on 24th March, 1878, with soloist Karel Slavkovský, and the “Filharmonie” Orchestra, conducted by Adolf Čech.
The soloist in this performance is the young Japanese pianist Mao Fujita, making his Proms debut. The Times wrote: “Fujita is a musician of tremendous versatility and taste, with a poetic sense of pulse and eloquent, insightful, fearless articulation”. This year he has appeared in recital at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg and in Dortmund, played the Mozart Piano Concerto No 20 with the Gewandhuisorchester in Leipzig, and performed in works by composers such as Prokofiev, Chopin and Saint-Saëna at the Verbier Festival in Switzerland.
Czech composer Leoš Janáček is probably best known for his operas, which include Jenůfa, The Cunning Little Vixen, Kát’a Kabanová and The Makropulos Affair. His Glagolitic Mass – a cantata for vocal soloists, choir, orchestra and organ – is regarded as one of the masterpieces of sacred music of the 20th century. Written in 1926 and based on an Old Church Slavonic text, the Glagolitic Mass is part religious and part pagan ritual, with original words which date from the 9th century. It was subject to a number of later alterations both by the composer and also after his death in 1928, when the work was published. As a celebration of Slavic culture, it’s also considered to be Janácek’s finest non-operatic work.
The soloists in the Glagolitic Mass are American soprano Corinne Winters, Czech mezzo-soprano Bella Adamova, British tenor David Butt Philip and British bass Brindley Sherratt, with German organist Christian Schmitt. They will be accompanied by the Prague Philharmonic Choir (choirmaster Lukáš Vasilek).
Jakub Hrůša leads the Czech Philharmonic Tour to Hamburg, and the Lucerne, Rheingau and BBC Proms festivals from 21st to 28th August, 2024. Tickets are available at the individual concert halls as listed on the Czech Philharmonic website, together with further information on the performances.
Information sourced from:
Czech Philharmonic programme notes