Thu, 13. 10. 2016, 7:00 p.m.

B1 Korean Flower

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

Sibelius's music is not played as much here as in other countries, but the exception is his D minor Violin Concerto, which is part of the standard repertoire of violinists anywhere in the world. The composer took several years to complete the work which was substantially revised, and after its premiere in Helsinki the violin solo part was made less demanding. It is nonetheless one of the most challenging concertos for the performer. The young violinist Yoon-Hee Kim made her public debut as a four-year-old, and was accepted into the preparatory class of Vienna's University of Music and Performing Arts, thus becoming the youngest ever student in the school's history.

That work is preceded by an overture by the young Korean composer Yongsu Ju called Flower of the Moment, after a poem by Ko Un. The overture uses a large number of percussion instruments which create expanses of colour.

Bohuslav Martinů considered his Third Symphony written in 1944 to be his first real symphony and rightly took great pride in it. It is a reaction to the depression that fell upon him in busy New York. The symphony was very special to him. "It is tragic in tone," he wrote. "I was very homesick when I wrote it ... As a model, I had in mind Beethoven's 'Eroica'." The Third Symphony was not a commission. Martinů wrote it from his heart as a gift to the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which first performed it.

At the conductor's podium will be Leoš Svárovský, conductor-in-chief of the Aichi Central Symphony Orchestra Nagoya, and principal guest conductor of the Bohuslav Martinů Philharmonic Orchestra.