PRSO at Strauss festival reviewed
The magazine Harmonie has published a review by journalist Petr Veber reflecting on the 26th edition of the Richard Strauss Festival in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. There the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra (PRSO) conducted by Tomáš Brauner performed twice (including at the opening of the entire festival) and alongside enthusiastic applause at the venue also received accolades in the review in question.
The complete text can be found HERE. Below we publish a selected passage concerning the PRSO’s performance:
“…Nevertheless, the concerts in the previous venues had also been completely standard and the PRSO’s performances had met with a deserved response. They were first entrusted with the honour of opening the festival. It was June 11, precisely the anniversary of his birth. The noon matinee had to sacrifice part of its usual duration to speeches; however, there was still sufficient room for intensively escalating dance music from the opera Salome, the famous suite from the opera The Knight of the Rose and five of Strauss’ songs, in which the PRSO accompanied the renowned German soprano Juliane Banse. If the orchestra played reliably, vividly and with great commitment under Tomáš Brauner on this occasion – whatever the impression shaped by the acoustics of the small stage – a day later the performance was genuinely top class. The organisers had turned part of the winter sports stadium hall into a decent looking and decent sounding space with a reasonable number of seats in the auditorium. The accompaniment of young horn player Amanda Kleibart from Luxembourg, winner of this year’s Richard Strauss Competition, reinforced both the virtuosity and the vigour of the composition during the Horn Concerto No.1. In addition, in the Alpine Symphony conductor Brauner succeeded with great imagination and completely convincingly to create an arch bridging the story and the scene; for over 50 minutes he held the attention of audience and players alike, working beautifully with details and solos as well as imposing peaks, initiating interesting differences of sound and mood in various stylised sections… In this piece the PRSO gave full reign to its artistic potential, rousing itself to a phenomenal performance carried along on flawless technique and personal passion – and gave the lie to the completely logical prejudice that Czechs cannot play the music of Richard Strauss perfectly as they do not have a sufficiently strong and lively tradition of it…”
