Claude Debussy: a selection of songs

Joaquín Turina: Poema en forma de canciones

Leoš Janáček: 6 national songs (sung by Gabel Eva)

Alban Berg: a selection of songs

Richard Strauss: Vier letzte Lieder

This recital by one of the most respected contemporary tenors, Pavol Breslik, features a selection of songs by composers who personified the progressive trends in music at the beginning of the 20th century: Claude Debussy (1862–1918), a prominent representative of musical impressionism; Alban Berg (1885–1935), a member of the Second Viennese School; Richard Strauss (1864–1949), the most fundamental bearer of the tradition of late romanticism; and Leoš Janáček (1854–1928), a ‘lone wolf’ who cannot be assigned to any 20th century musical tendency. There will also be songs by the Spanish composer Joaquín Turina (1882–1949).

Author: Jiří Zahrádka

Soloists: Kateřina Kněžíková (soprano), Jana Hrochová (alto), Jiří Brückler (baritone), Boris Stepanov (tenor)

Piano – Stanislav Gallin, Marcel Javorček, Martin Levický, Lenka Navrátilová

Josef Bohuslav Foerster (1859–1951): Die Weihe der Nacht, Op. 87/I

For female choir and piano

Leoš Janáček (1854–1928): Wolf´s Footprints JW IV/39

for soprano and tenor solo, female choir and piano

Josef Bohuslav Foerster (1859–1951): Abendlied, Op. 89/b

for male choir a cappella

Leoš Janáček (1854–1928): The Wandering Madman JW IV/43

for soprano, tenor and baritone solo, and male choir a cappella

Vítězslav Novák (1870–1949): Four Poems by Otokar Březina, Op. 47 – selection (3. Magic Midnights, 4. Thus Sang the Burning Stars)

for mixed choir a cappella

Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971): The Wedding

for solos, mixed choir, four pianos and percussion

The concert offers a cross-section through the essential Czech and Moravian choral works of the first two decades of the 20^th century (with some overlap, of course). During this period, which was a hectic time not only for music, the trio of composers Foerster – Novák – Janáček indicated the future direction of choral art. It is clear that Janáček´s work represented a fundamental shift from the then-current way of composing for choirs. This is also shown in other choral compositions featured in the programme for this concert. The second half will feature one of the foremost choral works of the 20^th century, Stravinsky´s The Wedding.

For Josef Bohuslav Foerster, the pre-war period was an extremely fruitful and happy one. The author, who lived in Vienna at that time, had his works published by Universal Edition, a publishing house that published many of the major musical achievements of Central Europe at that time. The composition for female choir with piano accompaniment Die Weihe der Nacht dates back to 1910. Foerster wrote it based on the text of a poem by Christian Friedrich Hebbel, and originally provided it with an orchestral accompaniment. It is a kind of nocturne in which both the choir and accompaniment deliver some charming moments of onomatopoeia. The male choral work Abendlied (Evening Song) was composed in 1916 based on a poem by Gustav Kellar, and was again distributed by the prestigious Universal Edition publishing house.

Janáček composed for the female choir briefly at the beginning of 1916, when he created four choral pieces for texts by F. S. Procházka, including Wolf´s Footprints, a poem by Jaroslav Vrchlický. It is not a coincidence that he composed for the female choir during the war period. It was due to the fact that his tried-and-tested Moravian Teacher´s Choir had been so decimated by the loss of men going to the front that it could no longer tour, and so choirmaster Ferdinand Vach thus established the Moravian Female Teacher´s Choir. Wolf´s Footprints also had its premiere the same year. Janáček´s female choral works are rarely performed due to their difficulty, and this is also an opportunity for us to admire the composer´s incomparable invention and unmistakable use of female voices.

The work for male choir with a soprano solo The Wandering Madman was created ten years after Janáček’s trio of choral pieces for Bezruč´s texts. In 1921, Janáček attended a lecture by Rabindranath Tagore, where he noted down the melodies of the poet´s speech before later publishing a column on the subject. The world of this thinker was probably close to that of Janáček, and so shortly afterwards, in 1922, he composed a choral work based on Tagore’s work which is undoubtedly one of the highlights of the choral art. Janáček´s manuscript with a part of the composition decorates the composer´s grave at Brno’s Central Cemetery.

At one point in time, Vítězslav Novák was one of the nation’s most respected artists internationally. As with Foerster, his lucky star rose and shone just before the Great War. Otokar Březina´s poems, which Novák set to music in his mixed a capella choral works from 1912, are a certain philosophical meditation in the context of European symbolism. They are the very first pieces for mixed choir that Novák composed. They are difficult works to perform, and due to their almost mystical nature, they weren´t as well-received as Novák´s previous folk-infused choral composition. The four pieces based on the texts of Otokar Březina´s poems rank among Novák´s most remarkable choral works.

By way of creating a contrast to the featured Czech and Moravian music, one of the world’s top choral works of the 20^th century will also be performed – Igor Stravinsky’s The Wedding for solos, mixed choir, four pianos and percussion. The author started working on it in 1913 and finished the score in 1917. He used Russian wedding texts collected by Piotr Kirievsky for his composition. The Wedding was created alongside Stravinsky´s most famous work, The Rite of Spring, and just as it is there, the main motor of The Wedding is the rhythm, harsh and fascinating. The composer dedicated the “Dance scenes with music and voices” (the subtitle) to the Russian Ballet, and it performed this unusual work in 1923 with choreography by Bronislava Nijinska. Even though The Wedding is one of Stravinsky´s most distinctive works, it is performed only exceptionally due to the difficulties involved in performing and staging it.

Author: Jiří Zahrádka

Claude Debussy (1862-1918): Trois chansons de France L 115 for song and piano

Claude Debussy: L´isle joyeuse for piano

Gustav Mahler (1860-1911): Kindertotenlieder for voice and piano

Leoš Janáček (1854-1928): Moravian Folk Poetry in Songs JW V/2 for voice and piano

Leoš Janáček: 1. X. 1905 (From the Street, 1^st October 1905), JW VIII/19

This recital by the outstanding singer Tomáš Král will present songs by authors who were born within the space of ten years and are some of the most respected authors that opened the door to the musical breakthrough of the 20^th century. The songs presented at the concert were also born in close proximity timewise – between the years 1892-1904. So close, and yet so distant…

The songs Trois chansons de France by Claude Debussy (1862–1918) were created in 1904 and dedicated by the author to the singer Emma Bardac. There are three songs: two are roundels set to verse from the 15^th century by Charles d´Orléans, while the third was composed to a 17^th century poem by Tristan L´Hermite.

Gustav Mahler (1860–1911) wrote his Kindertotenliede in 1901 and 1904. The composer drew from a collection by Friedrich Rückert from 1833–34. From more than 428 poems he chose only five for his cycle. The songs were originally written for alto voice with an orchestral accompaniment. The melodies of the songs, in whose texts Rückert reacted to the death of children, make an extremely strong impression with their extraordinarily natural character (which approaches that of folk songs). The cycle is one of the highlights of Mahler´s song output.

Moravian Folk Poetry in Songs is one of the most extensive cycles by Leoš Janáček (1854-1928), being made up of 53 songs. The composer worked on it between 1892-1901, so within a period that’s also connected with his work on the opera Jenůfa. Janáček was intensively engaged in folk music and song collection from approximately 1888, and the peak of this activity dates back to the 1890s, when this interest was closely connected to his compositional work. He remained faithful to folk songs throughout his life, however. He also devoted many years to adapting folk songs to be sung with a piano accompaniment. He experimented with them to some extent, and as a result these songs form a very distinctive part of the composer´s oeuvre. In 1892, the Šolc publishing house released the second edition of the Bouquet of National Moravian Songs, which was compiled by František Bartoš and Lev Janáček. On that occasion the publisher asked Janáček to add piano accompaniments to the songs. Janáček did so for fifteen songs which Šolc published in a first book in 1893. The second book was published in 1902, when the publisher printed the remaining 38 songs. They weren’t released together as a set until 1908, when they were published under the name Moravian Folk Poetry in Songs. The songs were performed for the first time (and only four of them) in Brno in 1904. The cycle was probably not performed completely during the composer´s life.

Two piano compositions will also be performed at the concert: Ballade slave by Claude Debussy from 1890, and 1. X. 1905 (From the Street, 1^st October 1905), which Leoš Janáček composed in 1905.

Author: Jiří Zahrádka

Leoš Janáček (1854–1928): Nursery Rhymes, JW V/7 – for 9 voices and 10 instrumentalists

Bohuslav Martinů (1890–1959): The Opening of the Wells, H 354

Cantata for soloists, reciter, female or children´s choir and a chamber ensemble

Hans Krása (1899–1944): Brundibár

Children´s opera in two acts with a libretto by Adolf Hoffmeister

Janáček´s playful Nursery Rhymes from 1925 is one of his few compositions that will also appeal to younger listeners. He found inspiration (as he had many times before) in the Lidové noviny newspaper, where nursery rhymes with cheerful drawings by Josef Lada, Ondřej Sekora and Jan Hála were published. Janáček had a whole collection of them at home. He chose eight of them and composed a cycle of compositions for 3 mezzo-sopranos, clarinet, piano and a children´s drum. The premiere took place in the hall of the Besední dům in Brno on 26^th October 1925, and it was a great success. One year later, the composer extended the Nursery Rhymes to contain ten more items. Moreover, he added other voices and instruments to the score and framed them with a short overture and a finale. It is interesting that Janáček wanted colour images to be projected while the composition was being performed but the technology available at the time was insufficient for the execution of his vision. Josef Lada fulfilled Janáček´s wish much later, in 1948, when he made a cartoon based on the Nursery Rhymes together with the director Eduard Hofman. It was Lada´s first experience with animated films. At the concert, Nursery Rhymes will be accompanied by the original film.

The Opening of the Wells is probably the most famous work by Bohuslav Martinů. This is probably due to the artist´s intimate confession of his loneliness and unfulfilled desire to return home, which was denied to him by the Communist regime. It is not surprising that this native of Vysočina longed so much for his home when his last visit to his homeland had taken place in 1938. Perhaps that is why he responded so positively to the text by Miroslav Bureš, a native of Polička, and in 1955 composed this fragile chamber cantata which conveys the listener back to an ancient ritual for welcoming the spring. In Martinů´s work, this custom is intertwined with the wisdom of old age and an understanding of the fate which has awaited all humans for generations untold.

This edition of the festival will once again commemorate a work intended for children who were deported to the Terezín Ghetto during World War II. This time, it will probably be the most famous piece connected with Terezín, the children´s opera Brundibár composed by Hans Krása with a text by Adolf Hoffmeister. The opera was originally created for a competition organized in 1938 by the Czechoslovak Ministry of Education. Unfortunately, the events of history unfolded differently and the competition was not evaluated. In 1944, the director of the Prague Jewish orphanage, Otto Freudenfeld, decided to perform the opera. However, the composer himself didn´t take part in the production as he had already been deported to Terezín. Subsequently, Freudenfeld also went to Terezín and he managed to smuggle the piano abstract from the opera into the camp. Krása re-instrumented it again and the famous premiere took place on 23^rd September 1943 in the Magdeburg barracks hall. The opera Brundibár, which is about an oppressor who is defeated by the joint forces of children and animals, gave the audience and the child performers from Terezín a chance to forget for just a moment the horrific world that surrounded them. Needless to say, many of the performers didn´t live to see the end of the war, just like the author of the opera himself, Hans Krása, who was murdered in the Auschwitz concentration camp in October 1944.

Author: Jiří Zahrádka

An integral part of Janáček´s interests was the support and collection of songs that I call sacred, popular or folk spiritual. Janáček chose to collaborate with (among other people) Hynek Bím in his research into folk songs. Bím’s task was to map western Moravia, and it was Bím who got hold of a collection of old church songs during his repeated collections in the village of Vnorovy. He paid a lot of attention to them despite the fact that they were only a small part of the total number of songs he recorded (as evidenced by the sixteen letters of correspondence between him and Janáček in which he deals with this topic). After all, it was in Vnorovy that Janáček found refuge with his uncle Jan Janáček (who worked as a pastor there from 1870-1878) after his father’s untimely death in 1866. He probably got to know the local spiritual songs in person, as he played the organ at the Vnorovy church gallery during his time there.

The focus of the songs is directly linked to the church year. Some of them can be found in the hymn book Slavíček rájský by Jan Josef Božan from 1719, which was the basic comparative material still used at the Vnorovy parish church services at the time of collection in 1911. Bím wrote down (and partially also recorded on a phonograph) songs for Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter and the celebration of the saints, as well as songs whose content is related to events in Christian life.

The programme “Church songs from Vnorovy” will, at least partially, reveal this still undiscovered pearl of folk music culture which until now has remained off the radar for folk music lovers. The selection of songs will allow us to look back one hundred years at a repertoire deeply rooted in the musical and pious environment of this village in the Slovácko region. A more intimate environment would be suitable for the programme, preferably a religious one. Selected singing soloists, as well as choirs from Vnorovy and its surroundings, perform with an organ, chamber instrument or a capella accompaniment. It might be worth considering making a recording of this exceptional occasion…

Author: Magdalena Múčková