Brauner to conduct giants Mozart and Mahler
On 6 March symphonies by two composing giants, Mozart and Mahler, will be on the programme of an evening at the Rudolfinum.
Audiences can look forward to a piece by the sunny master of classicism which – like the operas Don Giovanni and La clemenza di Tito – was premiered in Prague. This explains why it is popularly known as the Prague Symphony.
It has a number of distinctive characteristics, such as a slow, exceptionally long and in parts highly dramatic introduction. Curiously, it has only three movements, with no place for the minuet that was traditional at that time. Why that was we do not know.
In any case, its unusual features don’t cost the symphony anything in terms of either gravity or beauty. The Prague Symphony and the three that followed were Mozart’s last and they had an unusually strong influence on other composers. They are treasures in their genre!
Gustav Mahler’s oeuvre will be represented in the programme by his First Symphony, known as the Titan. Roughly 110 years separate it from Mozart’s Prague Symphony and a comparison of both pieces eloquently illustrates the dynamic development of music in the period in question.
Suffice it to consider the difference in size of orchestra or the musical expression; while Mozart’s music possesses “heavenly” calm, Mahler’s convulses with human passion and feeling.
Mahler drew inspiration for the Titan from the novel by Jean Paul, which was if anything a caricature. Paul’s hero isn’t in the least heroic. One detail points to the “caricature” aspect of this inspiration: Mahler once said that the first movement was sparked by a naive picture in which an animal is burying a hunter.
In musical terms the inspiration shows through in the fact that the high solo double bass plays the well-known French children’s ditty Frere Jacques, alternating it with a plaintive Jewish klezmer before delivering a quotation from the Songs of a Wayfarer cycle.
You will be able to catch such references at the 6 March concert. But what awaits you most of all are two magnificent pieces – we are sure – compellingly rendered by the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra. Its management have entrusted this wonderful interpretative assignment to Tomáš Brauner.
The concert will be broadcast live from the Rudolfinum’s Dvořák Hall on Czech Radio Vltava.
