The PRSO presented the Czech premiere of a musical rendition of Karel Jaromír Erben’s ballad The Noon Witch
On Monday 18 November the Dvořák Hall will take on an atmosphere of fairy tales, ballads and demons. For the first concert in the cycle „R – Classics at the Rudolfinum“, conductor Alexander Liebreich has selected pieces by Maurice Ravel, Ondřej Adámek and Sergei Prokofiev. For Adámek’s The Noon Witch the PRSO will be joined by the Prague Philharmonic Choir.
You can listen to a live broadcast on Czech Radio Vltava, and a recording will be broadcast two days later on Czech Radio D-dur.
Ravel originally composed his lovely fairy tale suite Ma mère l’Oye (Mother Goose) as a piano duet for his friends’ children, and the individual pieces are based on traditional French fairy tales. It was premiered in 1910; in 1911 it was adapted as a five-piece orchestral suite, and in 1912 Ravel expanded it to create a ballet.
Ondřej Adámek began thinking about creating his own version of The Noon Witch, based on Karel Jaromír Erben’s ballad, after hearing Antonín Dvořák’s symphonic poem of the same name. Adámek is one of the most prominent contemporary Czech composers. A graduate of conservatoires in Prague and Paris, he has lived and worked abroad for the last two decades. His opus had its world premiere at the Warsaw Autumn in 2013, when the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra from Katowice was conducted by its principal conductor at the time, Alexander Liebreich – and he evidently took a liking to this piece! The PRSO will be joined by the Prague Philharmonic Choir.
The concert will end with Symphony No. 3, in which Sergei Prokofiev worked with themes from his remarkably modern opera The Fiery Angel, which was based on Valery Bryusov’s novel. This story of passionate love, demonic possession and witchcraft is relayed through music that is sombre, mystical, sometimes archaic and extraordinarily expressive.
Tickets for the concert are available HERE.
PROGRAMME:
Maurice Ravel (1875–1937): Ma mère l’Oye, suite
Ondřej Adámek (1979): The Noon Witch, composition for choir and orchestra
Sergei Prokofiev (1891–1953): Symphony No. 3 in C minor, Op. 44
Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra
Alexander Liebreich – conductor
Prague Philharmonic Choir, choirmaster Lukáš Vasilek
