Thu, 27. 9. 2018, 7.00 p.m.

MY HOMELAND

Venue: Zlín Congress Centre  |  Organizer: Filharmonie Bohuslava Martinů, o.p.s.  | 

This opening concert of the Harmonia Moraviae festival and of the 2018-19 season features a work that is the absolute pinnacle of Czech music and one of the most valuable jewels in the crown of Czech cultural history. Bedřich Smetana's cycle of six symphonic poems called My Homeland is a supreme statement of patriotism in which the ideas of homeland, nation and glory come together as one. The work, born out of Czech legend, is a celebration of Czech history (Vyšehrad, Šárka, Tábor) and landscape (Vltava, From Bohemia's Woods and Fields), heralding a glorious future for the Czech nation (Blaník). With this composition Smetana created a prototype, as it were, for a new kind of symphonic poem in the sense that he did not base it on a literary or other model, but set out to create through the music alone a vision which he himself chose to portray. The piece, written between 1874–79 when Smetana was already showing symptoms of total deafness, is astounding in its melodic richness, structural logic and grandeur of scale. The first complete performance was at the Žofín Palace in Prague in 1882 although individual sections were performed separately prior to that, and tonight we hear it played by the Bohuslav Martinů Philharmonic under the baton of its Chief Conductor Tomáš Brauner.