Thu, 3. 12. 2026, 19:00 hrs.

A3 Kahánek Plays Incantation

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

Tonight's concert with leading Czech pianist Ivo Kahánek and the Bohuslav Martinů Philharmonic's chief conductor Robert Kružík offers a varied and colourful programme combining themes of water, folklore and the distinctive musical imagination of the first half of the twentieth century. The individual works all share a sense of orchestral colour, rhythmic vitality and the ability to transform non-musical inspiration into an original symphonic form.

The French composer Jacques Ibert composed his three-movement orchestral suite Escales in 1922 as imaginary musical postcards from his honeymoon trip across the Mediterranean, with the individual movements capturing the specific atmosphere of his impressions from the voyages between Rome and Palermo, Tunis and the Nefta oasis, and in Valencia, Spain. Ibert took cues from the local folklore, incorporating its characteristic rhythms and superb instrumentation to bring freshness, imagery, and a distinct sense of orchestral colour to the piece.

This is followed by Incantation, Bohuslav Martinů's fourth piano concerto, written in 1955–1956 in New York for the composer's friend the pianist Rudolf Firkušný at a time when Martinů was aware that his longed-for return to his homeland would never happen. The two-movement work, one of the highlights of Martinů's late material, is a complex synthesis of his distinctive musical language in a deviation from the conventional form of a piano concerto; in fact, many describe it more as a symphony with piano, with the piano featuring as part of the overall orchestral sound.

We then hear a musical view of the Fountains of Rome in the form of a colourful picture written by Respighi in 1916, with its gushing water and the atmosphere of the "Eternal City". It takes the listener to the Fountain of Valle Giulia at dawn, then to a picture of daily life at Rome's Triton Fountain; noon finds us at the famous Trevi Fountain, then on to the Villa Medici Fountain to watch the sunset.

We conclude with Enescu's Romanian Rhapsody written in 1901 when he was 19. This spirited piece reflects the energy and liveliness of Romanian folk music which is already evident in the opening clarinet melody derived from the Romanian drinking song Am un leu și vreau să-l beu, followed by a sequence of dances that build to a rousing finale.