Thu, 27. 2. 2020, 7.00 p.m.

A5 ROMANTIC

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

Emil Nikolaus von Reznicek wrote his three-act comic opera Donna Diana in 1894 based on a comedy by the Spanish dramatist Agustín Moreto y Cabana, and the opera using the composer's own libretto saw its first public performance at Prague's New German Theatre in the same year. At the time, Reznicek, whose Czech roots are evident in his name, was the bandmaster with one of the many military bands on redeployment in the Czech capital.

Also of Czech origin was František Antonín Rössler–Rosetti, born in Litoměřice, who is credited as the composer of almost 20 works for solo horn and orchestra. It was in the 1760s that his D-minor Horn Concerto was written, and the piece is performed tonight by Radek Baborák, one of the world's most widely acclaimed horn players.

In the second half of the concert we will hear Anton Bruckner's Fourth Symphony completed in 1874, subtitled "Romantic" by the composer himself and one of his best loved works. In the following decade Bruckner revised the score several times, with the final version emerging in 1888. Bruckner was not only an exceptional symphony composer but also an outstanding organist, and at one stage he seriously considered taking up the vacant post of organist at Olomouc Cathedral which, in the end, he did not. It is noteworthy however that his monumental Fourth Symphony resonates through the orchestra as a whole in the colossal manner of a notional organ.