Thu, 8. 11. 2018, 7.00 p.m.

B2 SCHEHERAZADE

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

Leoš Janáček's three-act opera 'Fate' is considered by many to be one of his strangest. Written to a libretto by Fedora Bartošová, the action is set in the spa town of Luhačovice which the composer visited on 23 occasions in his life. And it was his acquaintance struck up with a certain Kamila Urválková in Luhačovice that provided the inspiration for this work. Janáček, however, never lived to see the work performed as it was rejected by the theatres both in Prague and Brno. Its first production was not staged until 1958, some 30 years after the composer's death. Tonight we hear the Bohuslav Martinů Philharmonic Orchestra play the orchestral suite from the opera in an arrangement by Tomáš Ille.

Tomáš Ille, who come from Zlín, is also the composer of the next work, a programmatic suite called 'Pražské čtvrti' - the districts of Prague. The piece, as the title suggests, draws its inspiration from the capital city using musical humour and a degree of hyperbole to conjure up images of some of the locales in the 'Mother of Cities', as the capital's coat of arms describes it. In this way the listener is taken on an imaginary walk through Vyšehrad, the Jewish Quarter, Letná in the late afternoon, Wenceslas Square and the Magistrála main thoroughfare, ending up at Prague Castle. It is worth noting that the soloist in this piece is the outstanding Czech musician Marek Zvolánek, who switches between the trumpet, flugelhorn and piccolo trumpet to add to the musical colour and overall appeal of the work.
This evening's concert closes with the well-known and remarkable symphonic suite Scheherazade, in which Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov draws on themes from the One Thousand and One Nights tales, using highly colourful instrumentation to capture the atmosphere of the Orient in times past.