Leoš Janáček (1854–1928): Great Suite from the Opera The Cunnning Little Vixen (adapted Jakub Hrůša)

Richard Strauss (1864–1949): An Alpine Symphony, op. 64

This concert by the Bamberger Symphoniker under the leadership of their chief conductor Jakub Hrůša will present the works of two generationally related authors and their perspectives on the countryside, which are very different from one other.

It was probably the fact that such an exceptional composer as Leoš Janáček composed only a few works for the symphony orchestra that led conductors, soon after Janáček´s death, to adapt his opera scores into opera suites which could be performed at symphonic concerts. The first such suite was created from the opera The Cunning Little Vixen by the excellent conductor Václav Talich, but only using music from Act 1. In 2017, the conductor Jakub Hrůša decided to use the purely orchestral passages to create a Grand Suite from the same opera. He was well aware of the fact that orchestral music without singing forms more than a third of the whole piece. He created a suite which follows the plot of the opera chronologically and covers the parts intended for the orchestra. The result is more than excellent and helps us to realize just how distinctive, impressive and engaging the orchestral component of the opera which Janáček composed in 1922-24 is. This extensive orchestral suite will be performed Brno for the first time.

An Alpine Symphony is one of the less frequently performed symphonic poems by Richard Strauss, who composed it during the war years of 1914–15. After his Symphonia Domestica he decided that from then on he would only compose for the opera, but fortunately he didn´t stick to his resolution. He had a beautiful view of the alpine peak Zugspitze and the mighty Wetterstein Mountains from the window of his country house in Garmisch, and he decided to transfer this natural scenery into the score. With the symphony Strauss wished to create an impressive alpine musical panorama describing exclusively visible facts rather than a work exploring our spiritual relationship to nature. His musical painting is an exceptional work: in the score we can find cow bells and at one point the instruments are used to simulate a storm. When the symphony was first introduced in Berlin, the reviewers called it an idyll (just as Janáček called The Cunning Little Vixen a “forest idyll”) and commented on the presence of a certain simplicity or naivety that was unexpected of Strauss. The author himself commented on the work with the words: “For once I wanted to compose like a cow giving milk.”

Author: Jiří Zahrádka

Finnish mythology tells of a mythical artefact called Sampo which ensures the well-being and continuity of the world. Contemporary science can trace the genetic footprint of humans thousands of years into the past via research into the human genome. In the near future, two neuropharmaceutical corporations are competing with each other: one of them manages to combine two achievements: to create a substance that can transfer a person into an ancient myth, and to let them experience the story of their mythical ancestors. However, this may not be as “perfect” in all its truthfulness as the stories we use to shape our identity on social networks today. Is a contemporary person prepared to know the truth about themselves?

The Kalevala is a collection of Finnish – Karelian mythology whose purely oral form was collected during visits to villages by the Finnish physician and linguist Elias Lönnrot (1802–1884). These were individual stories that Lönnrot combined into an epic narrative. The opera S.A.M.P.O. takes The Kalevala as a source of inspiration and updates its motifs and characters to create a story set in the near future. The opera was made to order by the Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts for the Janáček Brno festival. It is the first collaboration of both faculties of the Janáček Academy on a project of such a type, and at the same time, it is the opera’s world premiere.

Otto Kauppinen graduated from the Faculty of Theatre, Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts, specializing in theatre dramaturgy. In 2015 -2016 he worked as a dramaturge for Brno’s Divadlo Feste Theatre. In 2017-2018 he worked closely with the Continuo Theatre in Malovice as a dramaturge and director. Otto is half Finnish and is bilingual. He has been translating contemporary Finnish drama into Czech since 2012, and has translated 13 theatre plays so far. He has won, among other things, the first prize at the 2014 Evald Schorm Awards for his translations. He is currently a doctoral student at the Faculty of Theatre, Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts. He presents the topic of his dissertation thesis, the search for a non-hierarchical relationship between the production form and the spectator, at international conferences as well as in professional journals.

Daniel Šimek studied the piano at the Brno Conservatory. In June 2019 he completed his follow-up Master´s degree in composition at the Faculty of Music, Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts. He has been studying orchestra conducting since 2018, and since 2016 he has worked as a piano teacher and accompanist at a music school in Velké Opatovice. He has been a keyboard player in the band Universe B since 2017. In 2018 he became the leader of the Mirror Ensemble, which focuses on contemporary music. He composed the pieces Shapes of Time (2018), Waves (2015), Questioning, and Head Echoes (2016–2019). He has composed music for stage projects as part of Devítka Studio and the Chamber Opera of the Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts: Master (2016), the background music for a production of the Magic Flute (2017), and Unknown (2018, performed at the Janáček Brno 2018 festival).

Finnish mythology tells of a mythical artefact called Sampo which ensures the well-being and continuity of the world. Contemporary science can trace the genetic footprint of humans thousands of years into the past via research into the human genome. In the near future, two neuropharmaceutical corporations are competing with each other: one of them manages to combine two achievements: to create a substance that can transfer a person into an ancient myth, and to let them experience the story of their mythical ancestors. However, this may not be as “perfect” in all its truthfulness as the stories we use to shape our identity on social networks today. Is a contemporary person prepared to know the truth about themselves?

The Kalevala is a collection of Finnish – Karelian mythology whose purely oral form was collected during visits to villages by the Finnish physician and linguist Elias Lönnrot (1802–1884). These were individual stories that Lönnrot combined into an epic narrative. The opera S.A.M.P.O. takes The Kalevala as a source of inspiration and updates its motifs and characters to create a story set in the near future. The opera was made to order by the Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts for the Janáček Brno festival. It is the first collaboration of both faculties of the Janáček Academy on a project of such a type, and at the same time, it is the opera’s world premiere.

Otto Kauppinen graduated from the Faculty of Theatre, Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts, specializing in theatre dramaturgy. In 2015 -2016 he worked as a dramaturge for Brno’s Divadlo Feste Theatre. In 2017-2018 he worked closely with the Continuo Theatre in Malovice as a dramaturge and director. Otto is half Finnish and is bilingual. He has been translating contemporary Finnish drama into Czech since 2012, and has translated 13 theatre plays so far. He has won, among other things, the first prize at the 2014 Evald Schorm Awards for his translations. He is currently a doctoral student at the Faculty of Theatre, Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts. He presents the topic of his dissertation thesis, the search for a non-hierarchical relationship between the production form and the spectator, at international conferences as well as in professional journals.

Daniel Šimek studied the piano at the Brno Conservatory. In June 2019 he completed his follow-up Master´s degree in composition at the Faculty of Music, Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts. He has been studying orchestra conducting since 2018, and since 2016 he has worked as a piano teacher and accompanist at a music school in Velké Opatovice. He has been a keyboard player in the band Universe B since 2017. In 2018 he became the leader of the Mirror Ensemble, which focuses on contemporary music. He composed the pieces Shapes of Time (2018), Waves (2015), Questioning, and Head Echoes (2016–2019). He has composed music for stage projects as part of Devítka Studio and the Chamber Opera of the Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts: Master (2016), the background music for a production of the Magic Flute (2017), and Unknown (2018, performed at the Janáček Brno 2018 festival).

Leoš Janáček (1854–1928): 1. X. 1905 (From the Street, 1st October 1905), JW VIII/19

On an Overgrown Path, series 1, 2, JW VIII/17

Thema con variazioni, JW VIII/6

In the Mists, JW VIII/22

A piano recital by one of the most gifted pianists of the younger generation is always one of the highlights of festival concerts. Jan Bartoš recorded and published Janáček´s complete piano works with Supraphon in 2019, and immediately received accolades from foreign reviewers, such as the prestigious Editor´s Choice award from Gramophone magazine.

The composition 1. X. 1905 (“From the Street, 1st October 1905”) was created spontaneously as a reaction to a tragedy which took place during demonstrations for a Czech university in Brno. After years of efforts to establish a Czech higher education institution in Brno, the government agreed that Brno citizens should be allowed to decide for themselves about whether a Czech university should be created or not. However, as Brno was predominantly German, the German representatives of the city were afraid of Czechs gaining greater influence and so convened a “Volkstag” in Brno on 1st October 1905. German associations and organizations from far and wide were invited to demonstrate their opposition to the foundation of a Czech University in Brno. In response, the Czech citizens of the city organized a large anti-German demonstration. Street fights took place between the two camps, and the police and subsequently also the army were called in. During one of the battles, a young Czech worker named František Pavlík was killed. Filled with impressions from this tragic event, Janáček sat down to write the originally three-movement composition From the Street, I. X. 1905. However, shortly before its premiere on 27th January 1906 he burnt the last movement, and after another performance in Prague he even threw the whole manuscript into the Vltava River. Fortunately, the first performer of the composition, the pianist Ludmila Tučková, kept the original copy and made it public quite some time later, in 1924. Thanks to her, this piano piece, forgotten by Janáček for many years, has been preserved.

The piano cycle of poetic compositions On an Overgrown Path was created gradually during 1900, 1908 and 1911. Janáček wrote the first five compositions of the first series of the cycle in 1900. They were published by a teacher from Ivančice, Emil Kolář, as small compositions for the harmonium in several books for music students entitled Slavonic Melodies. The editor, Jan Branberger, played a role in popularising the cycle when he arranged for the compositions to be printed by a Prague publisher, Bedřich Kočí, in 1908. The interest of publishers in the compositions led Janáček to the creation of other parts, and so the cycle grew to comprise a total of ten pieces, to which the composer assigned poetic titles. On 30^th September 1911, shortly before the first series of the cycle was published by Píša´s publishing house, Janáček released the first composition from a new series of the cycle On an Overgrown Path in the Večery fiction section of the Lidové noviny newspaper, this time without a poetic name. The printed source was based on Sedláček´s undated copy containing a total of three numbered compositions, all without a name, the last of which is basically a sketch that Bartoš, for obvious reasons, did not include in the second series.

Janáček greatly valued the piano compositions Thema con variazioni (or also Zdenka Variations) at the time of its creation, and he even labelled them Opus No. 1, even though he had composed many other pieces before. The creation of this composition dates to the beginning of 1880, i.e. to the period when the composer was studying at the Conservatory in Leipzig. He wrote the piece under the direction of his professor, Leo Grill, and dedicated it to his fiancée Zdenka Schulzová. For the young Janáček it was an important work in which he tested his ability to compose in the style of Schumann, Tchaikovsky, Liszt or Brahms.

Janáček completed his piano cycle In the Mists in April 1912. Not a long time before, in 1910, he had moved to a new house in the garden of Brno’s organ school with his wife and maid, and there, hiding from the world, with broken self-confidence and in a melancholy mood, he composed his last more extensive work for solo piano. He worked on it shortly after listening to piano compositions by the French composer Claude Debussy, and it is no coincidence that his dreamlike melancholic work contains elements of musical impressionism. The cycle In the Mists won the first prize in a contest for composers run by the Club of Friends of Art, which was supposed to publish the winning work. However, Janáček left the opportunity to have a composition published to his pupil, Jaroslav Kvapil, who came second in the contest. In the Mists was played for the first time by Marie Dvořáková in Kroměříž on 7^th December 1913.

Author: Jiří Zahrádka

Take a closer look at the opera! Take a step behind the curtain with us. A programme designed for all curious people, big and small, who would like to get to know something new about the world of an opera house. A 70-minute interactive, adventurous and mainly entertaining journey into the heart of opera with the soloists, choir and orchestra of the Janáček Opera, National Theatre Brno.

Your guide will be the chief conductor, Marko Ivanović.

Claude Debussy (1862-1918): Trois chansons de France L 115 for song and piano

Claude Debussy: Ballade slave L 70 for piano

Gustav Mahler (1860-1911): Kindertotenlieder for voice and piano

Leoš Janáček (1854-1928): Moravian Folk Poetry in Songs JW V/2 for voice and piano

Leoš Janáček: 1. X. 1905 (From the Street, 1^st October 1905), JW VIII/19

This recital by the outstanding singer Tomáš Král will present songs by authors who were born within the space of ten years and are some of the most respected authors that opened the door to the musical breakthrough of the 20^th century. The songs presented at the concert were also born in close proximity timewise – between the years 1892-1904. So close, and yet so distant…

The songs Trois chansons de France by Claude Debussy (1862–1918) were created in 1904 and dedicated by the author to the singer Emma Bardac. There are three songs: two are roundels set to verse from the 15^th century by Charles d´Orléans, while the third was composed to a 17^th century poem by Tristan L´Hermite.

Gustav Mahler (1860–1911) wrote his Kindertotenliede in 1901 and 1904. The composer drew from a collection by Friedrich Rückert from 1833–34. From more than 428 poems he chose only five for his cycle. The songs were originally written for alto voice with an orchestral accompaniment. The melodies of the songs, in whose texts Rückert reacted to the death of children, make an extremely strong impression with their extraordinarily natural character (which approaches that of folk songs). The cycle is one of the highlights of Mahler´s song output.

Moravian Folk Poetry in Songs is one of the most extensive cycles by Leoš Janáček (1854-1928), being made up of 53 songs. The composer worked on it between 1892-1901, so within a period that’s also connected with his work on the opera Jenůfa. Janáček was intensively engaged in folk music and song collection from approximately 1888, and the peak of this activity dates back to the 1890s, when this interest was closely connected to his compositional work. He remained faithful to folk songs throughout his life, however. He also devoted many years to adapting folk songs to be sung with a piano accompaniment. He experimented with them to some extent, and as a result these songs form a very distinctive part of the composer´s oeuvre. In 1892, the Šolc publishing house released the second edition of the Bouquet of National Moravian Songs, which was compiled by František Bartoš and Lev Janáček. On that occasion the publisher asked Janáček to add piano accompaniments to the songs. Janáček did so for fifteen songs which Šolc published in a first book in 1893. The second book was published in 1902, when the publisher printed the remaining 38 songs. They weren’t released together as a set until 1908, when they were published under the name Moravian Folk Poetry in Songs. The songs were performed for the first time (and only four of them) in Brno in 1904. The cycle was probably not performed completely during the composer´s life.

Two piano compositions will also be performed at the concert: Ballade slave by Claude Debussy from 1890, and 1. X. 1905 (From the Street, 1^st October 1905), which Leoš Janáček composed in 1905.

Author: Jiří Zahrádka

Leoš Janáček (1854–1924): The Eternal Gospel, JW III/ 8, a legend for soloists, mixed choir and orchestra based on a poem by Jaroslav Vrchlický

The Glagolitic Mass, JW III/9, for soloists, mixed choir, organ and orchestra

The gallery of the Basilica of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary in Old Brno was a very significant place for Janáček. He was raised in the Augustinian abbey from the age of 11, sang as a choral scholar in the Old Brno basilica gallery, and subsequently also played the organ there. After Pavel Křížkovský left for Olomouc, Janáček became the director of the choir in 1872.

The legend in verses with the title The Eternal Gospel – Legend 1240 from the collection Frescoes and Tapestries published in 1891 is inspired by the teachings of the medieval monk Joachim of Fiore (1132-1202), whose interpretation of history culminates in the period of Holy Spirit, or in other words the love of all mankind for all of creation. It is somewhat symbolic that Janáček set this message to music shortly before the outbreak of World War I. We do not know exactly when the composition was made, but the first document confirming the existence of the completed piece dates from 1914. In Janáček´s The Eternal Gospel, the prophecy of Joachim of Fiore is divided into four parts with an emphasis on the tenor part and the choir. The Gospel is closely connected musically with the opera The Excursions of Mr. Brouček, and not only as far as the instruments are concerned. The premiere took place on 5^th February 1917 staged by the Prague singing association Hlahol and the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra led by the conductor Jaroslav Křička.

The Glagolitic Mass is undoubtedly one of the foremost spiritual compositions of the 20^th, or indeed any century. Janáček gave some thought to the composition in 1920 but didn´t get round to commencing purposeful work on it until 1926, when he composed the piece during a rainy stay at the spa in Luhačovice. The use of the Church Slavonic language is not surprising in Janáček´s case because the monastery in Old Brno, where he spent the latter part of his childhood, was a centre of the cult of Cyril and Methodius. Janáček himself, as a choral scholar, took part in the grand Velehrad celebrations held to mark the occasion of the 1000^th anniversary of Cyril´s death. The work was generously conceived for soloists, choir, orchestra and organ, and its premiere was performed by Beseda brněnská with the National Theatre orchestra on 5^th December 1927 under the baton of Jaroslav Kvapil.

The Glagolitic Mass is one of the most oft-performed spiritual compositions of the 20^th century, and it still amazes and enchants through its novelty, energy and tenderness. Even though Janáček dedicated this composition to a high dignitary of the Catholic church, the Archbishop of Olomouc Leopold Prečan, the spiritual dimension of the work goes beyond Catholic doctrine and aims somewhere towards Janáček-style pantheism.

Autor: Jiří Zahrádka