Vienna Philharmonic & Jakub Hrůša @ George Enescu Festival 11.09.2023 (FULL CONCERT), 2nd night, Palace Hall Bucharest
0:34 Janáček: Suite from the opera The Cunning Little Vixen (compilation by Charles Mackerras)
22:49 Enescu: Orchestral Suite No. 1 in C major, Op. 9
53:58 Rachmaninoff: Symphonic Dances, Op. 45
1:34:50 Johann Strauss II: "Auf der Jagd" ("On the Hunt"), polka schnell, Op. 373 (encore)
Recorded from public broadcast. Enjoy!
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Although the music of his country had tremendous effect on Janácek, his wide-ranging education - both musically and beyond - also accounts for his compositional style. It took Janácek a long time to develop his musical voice, but once he did, it was a wholly original one. Among the remarkable series of operas Janácek wrote in the enormously productive final decade of his career, the tragicomedy The Cunning Little Vixen ("The Adventures of Vixen SharpEars" in Czech) is a highlight. The story came from a serialized novella written by Rudolf Tesnohlídek and published in the Lidové noviny newspaper. Janácek adapted the story into his own libretto. Like much of his mature work, the opera is concise and tightly strung. It should not come as a surprise that the orchestral Suite performed tonight is similarly short and pithy, each of the two movements only about nine minutes. The Cunning Little Vixen works well as a suite, in part due to its several symphonic pantomime sections.
While written in a poetic manner reminiscent of fairy tales, Janácek's libretto contains some of his most experimental operatic concepts, including ballet, mime, and orchestral interludes. The score is laden with lush harmonies, all part of the pastorale, a reflection on nature and our condition as humans within it. At the end, the Forester becomes reconciled to the natural life cycle, as the Vixen dies, and he watches the Vixen's young child playing in the woods. The opera, which moves almost seamlessly between the animal and the human worlds, is at once eerie, tender, and farcical. The Suite on this program, the version most commonly performed, is a slightly condensed rendering of Act One without the voices. The renowned Czech conductor Vaclav Talich orchestrated this suite, which has a slightly more smoothed-out sound than Janácek's ferocious, inventive orchestration.
(laphil.com)
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Among Enescu's larger works are three orchestral suites, whose composition spans his entire creative career: the first dating from 1901-1902, the second from 1915, the last from 1938.
The First Suite, in C, was introduced under its composer's direction at a concert of the Bucharest Philharmonic Society (of which he was later to become director) on February 23, 1903. On the program as well were the first performances of his two Romanian Rhapsodies, whose more obvious populist style attracted most of the attention.
Most striking in the Suite in C are the first two movements which, following the composer's practice in his own later appearances as a conductor, are heard as an entity to begin this program. The opening movement is scored for strings (violins, mainly), playing in unison a broad melody of decidedly Eastern European cast, with the timpani entering ominously in a long crescendo, leading into the second movement, a slow, lushly textured minuet based on a sad, descending three-note phrase.
(Herbert Glass)
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Symphonic Dances, Op. 45, is an orchestral suite in three movements completed in October 1940 by Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff. It is his final major composition, and his only piece written in its entirety while living in the United States.
The work allowed him to indulge in a nostalgia for the Russia he had known, much as he had done in the Symphony No. 3, as well as to effectively sum up his lifelong fascination with ecclesiastical chants. In the first dance, he quotes the opening theme of his Symphony No. 1, itself derived from motifs characteristic of Russian church music. In the finale he quotes both the Dies Irae and the chant "Blessed art thou, Lord" (Blagosloven yesi, Gospodi) from his All-Night Vigil. (Wikipedia)
18 ноя 2023
