00:05 Preludium
04:42 Burleska
09:30 Nokturno
14:34 Tarantella
František Hertl died on 23 February 1973. His life, work and 50th death anniversary are being celebrated in 2023 worldwide with many concerts. Our contribution within this recital was performance of his most famous piece, "Sonata for Double Bass and Piano" (1946), as well as performance of this less known, Hertl's late work "Four Compositions for Double Bass and Piano" (1968).
This excellent composition is less known for several reasons. Shortly after military occupation of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet Army in 1968, the country got quickly isolated by the communist totalitary regime. Sheet music for this piece was published by Editio Supraphon Prague in 1969, however it was printed in only modest amount of units. After short time this sheet music was sold out and since composer's death it was not available for longer than 40 years. Finally Bärenreiter Edition published sheet music again just a few years ago.
RU-vid release of this video happens now despite nearly hopelessly problematic situation during the preparing stage for this recital. A harmless, but very unpleasant sport injury of a muscle in the shoulder and slow recovery kept me away from possibility to practice parts of this programme since February 2023. Unlimited and painless playing is finally possible since beginning of April, less than two weeks before this recital. Another problem is the beautiful new LED-lighting on the stage of the concert hall, which isn't compatible for video recordings, as it creates constantly flickering. Logically, we decided under such difficult circumstances not to record this concert. But in the last minute I decided to take just a few cameras and two pairs of microphones, just to keep this performance for the archives. The final result became beyond all expectations good. Sound of "close-up" positioned microphones is better than expected and close-up camera positioning has reduced flickering on a minimum.
This excellent composition, composed 55 years ago, shuld be performed much more often. I was very surprised that I wasn't able to find on RU-vid even one single video with full performance of all four pieces, thus this is possibly the first one on RU-vid.
Thus Annalisa Orlando and myself are sharing now recording of this performance with all of you. We hope for Hertl's music to find its way to the hearts of many people.
Cheers ans thanks for watching 🤗
Božo Paradžik
11 май 2023
