Concertina Winners Matejča and Schulmeister with the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra
Two brilliant young musicians – violinist Daniel Matejča and pianist Jan Schulmeister – will delight the audience at the first of the Radio Symphony Orchestra’s evenings in the Bethlehem Chapel.
Yes, this season once again brings you a series of five concerts in this impressive venue. On Tuesday, September 23, the chapel will resound with the music of the classics as well as the premiere of a new work by contemporary composer Jaroslav Pelikán. The orchestra will be conducted by Jaroslav Kyzlink.
The Adagio forms part of Pelikán’s new three-movement symphony, which will receive its complete premiere at the upcoming Talichův Beroun Festival. The slow movement, subtitled Tetín Meditation for St. Ludmila, was conceived independently as the first part last summer. Its inspiration came from the composer’s participation in masses at the Catholic church in Tetín, in the Bohemian Karst near Beroun – the very place where, according to legend, Ludmila, grandmother of Duke Wenceslaus and later canonized as a saint, was murdered in 921. The composer describes his Adagio both as a musical reflection on a landscape he admires and as an imaginary dialogue with the saint.
Mozart’s Double Concerto is a highly unusual work with an extraordinary history. Begun in Mannheim in 1778, it has survived only as a fragment, and that solely of the first movement. Even in such an incomplete state, the indicated shape and character have led experts to argue that the absence of the complete composition represents one of art’s greatest losses. The surviving portion – barely a hundred bars – reveals the composer’s brilliance and lofty artistic ambitions. It is no wonder that this concerto has long attracted musicians eager to test their skills by reconstructing it. Among them were Robert Levin, who elaborated the fragment of the opening movement, and British composer Philip Wilby, whose full completion in 1990 allows the concerto to be performed today in its standard form.
The perfectly crafted, delicately resonant Tre ricercari, which shortly after their creation were successfully performed at the Festival of Contemporary Music in Venice, are based on variation of a short model. They alternate instrumental groups in a concertante manner and feature the cantilena of a solo flute. This chamber-orchestral work belongs to the finest achievements of Bohuslav Martinů’s Paris period.
