R5 / Elina Vähälä plays Bartók • Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra

A fusion of Central European and French music can be presaged by a guest appearance of the Hamburg Symphony's Principal Conductor Sylvain Cambreling. The programme will open with Jealousy, the original overture to the opera Jenůfa, rejected by Janáček. The drama will continue with Concerto No. 2 for violin and orchestra. Béla Bartók composed it shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War in his native Hungary, full of fear of the growing fascism, from which he eventually fled to the United States. The work was premiered in 1939 at the Concert-gebouw in Amsterdam, with the composer's friend Zoltán Székely as soloist. In Prague, the virtuoso solo part will fall to the excellent Finnish violinist Elina Vähäla. The French conductor will end the evening with the music of Olivier Messiaen, to whom he has devoted considerable space in his long performing career. In Prague he will present his spiritual composition L'ascension from 1933.