Czech Philharmonic • Velvet Revolution Concert

Johannes Brahms took inspiration for several of his works from subject matter referring to the cultural treasures of antiquity. In ancient Rome, a “naenia” was a song of lament that accompanied a funeral procession. The poem Nänie by Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805) was published in 1800, and Johannes Brahms wrote a musical setting for mixed choir and orchestra 80 years later in reaction to the death of his friend, the painter Anselm Feuerbach (1829–1880), and dedicated it to the artist’s mother Henrietta Feuerbach. Schiller’s verses are a lament for abstract beauty; the dead hero is not identified in the poem, nor is the ruler of the underworld mentioned by name. Knowledge of mythology was widespread in those days, and readers recognised the combining of several motifs – the familiar Orpheus and Euridice motif, Aphrodite weeping over her dead lover Adonis, the inability of the sea nymph Thetis to save the life of her son, the Trojan War hero Achilles, and her grief, which the gods of Olympus shared with her.

The composition’s three formal sections make plentiful use of tone painting corresponding to the poem’s structure. After an orchestral introduction, the first section mourns the death of beauty (the central idea is entrusted to a solo soprano). The second part describes the inexorability of death. The lament of the sea nymph Thetis constitutes the third part of the composition. The premiere took place on 6 December 1881 at the Tonhalle in Zurich with Brahms conducting a programme consisting exclusively of his own works, including the Second Piano Concerto, in which he also appeared as the soloist, the Tragic Overture, and the First Symphony. More performances of Nänie soon followed in Dresden, Hamburg, Frankfurt, London, and elsewhere.

Born to a musical family in the Netherlands, she was introduced to music at an early age by her parents who were professional musicians. She sang in a church choir, and at the age of six she began playing the violin under the tutelage of the famed pedagogue Coosje Wijzenbeek. She was then able to make music with her father and her brothers. She witnessed rehearsals of early music ensembles, and she was herself playing with a Baroque bow at one time, but ultimately she decided to go down the “traditional” path and to honour historically informed interpretation in a different way, for example by her phrasing. She studied under Philipp Hirschhorn and Boris Belkin, and after her debut at Amsterdam’s famed Concertgebouw, she launched her international career. In 2003 she began recording for the Decca Classics label, winning acclaim for her recording of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, made with a chamber ensemble including her father and brother.

Today, she is collaborating regularly with the world’s top orchestras like the Berlin Philharmonic, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and the New York Philharmonic. As the Artist-in-Residence of the Berlin Philharmonic for the 2025/2026 season, she has appeared with Kirill Petrenko and Sir Simon Rattle as well as on chamber music programmes.

Artistic partnerships in chamber music are important to Janine Jansen—she works closely with the pianists Denis Kozhukhin and Suwook Kim, and she plays in an established trio with Martha Argerich and Mischa Maisky. In 2003 she established the International Chamber Music Festival Utrecht, which has continued for more than 20 seasons. Since November 2023, she has been the professor of violin at the prestigious academy in Kronberg. With Sir Antonio Pappano at the piano, she recorded an album titled 12 Stradivari, selecting compositions for the twelve rare violins to bring out the unique voice of each instrument. This meant that Kreisler’s Liebesleid, for example, could be played on a violin that once belonged to the composer himself. To mark the 200th anniversary of Beethoven’s death, Janine Jansen is curating a Beethoven festival at the Concertgebouw, at which she will perform all of his violin sonatas.

She has been collaborating with the Czech Philharmonic since 2007, when she made her debut with the orchestra in Heidelberg, Kiel, and Hamburg. In 2016 she played Bruch’s First Violin Concerto in Prague with Semyon Bychkov, and at the Velvet Revolution Concert in November 2023, she performed Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E minor under the baton of Sir Antonio Pappano. Her appointment as Artist-in-Residence for the 2026/2027 season will mark another chapter in this long-standing partnership.

Janine Jansen plays the “Shumsky-Rode” violin made by Antonio Stradivari in 1715.

The Prague Philharmonic Choir, founded in 1935 by its choirmaster Jan Kühn, is the oldest professional choir of mixed voices in the Czech Republic. Lukáš Vasilek serves as chief choirmaster and artistic director, with Lukáš Kozubík as associate choirmaster. The choir has won particular acclaim for its interpretations of the oratorio and cantata repertoire, which it performs with the worldʼs leading orchestras. In this country, it collaborates regularly with the Czech Philharmonic and the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra. As choir-in-residence at Austriaʼs Bregenz Festival, it is also active in opera. It regularly presents its own choral concerts, with programmes devoted primarily to demanding and rarely performed works from the choral repertoire, while also engaging in a wide range of educational projects. For students of vocal performance, the choir organises the Prague Philharmonic Choir Academy in honour of Soňa Červená, while younger children are served by a series of educational concerts. The choir received a Classic Prague Award in 2018 and the Antonín Dvořák Prize in 2022.

Lukáš Vasilek studied conducting and musicology. Since 2007, he has been the chief choirmaster of the Prague Philharmonic Choir (PPC). Most of his artistic work with them involves rehearsing and performing a cappella repertoire and preparing them to perform in large-scale cantatas, oratorios, and operatic projects in collaboration with world-famous conductors and orchestras (Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Czech Philharmonic, Israel Philharmonic, Kyiv Symphony Orchestra, etc.).

In addition to leading the PPC, he is active in a wide range of artistic projects, most notably in collaboration with the vocal ensemble Martinů Voices, which he founded in 2010. As a conductor and choirmaster, he appears on numerous recordings for major international labels, including Decca Classics and Supraphon. In recent years, he has focused systematically on recording the choral music of Bohuslav Martinů. His recordings have received extraordinary worldwie acclaim and have earned awards from prestigious publications such as Gramophone, BBC Music Magazine, and Diapason.

The standing of Sir Antonio Pappano, a conductor adorned by multiple honours and awards, including the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic, the Order of the British Empire and the Gold Medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society, is perhaps best illustrated by his current situation. In the 2023–2024 season, after more than two decades, he left the post of music director of the world-renowned Royal Opera House in London (a position subsequently taken over by Jakub Hrůša) and assume the role of chief conductor of the prestigious London Symphony Orchestra.

One of the presently most sought-after opera and concert conductors, Sir Antonio Pappano was born in 1959 in Epping, Essex, into a family who had moved to England from Italy. When he was 13 years of age, they relocated to Connecticut. The son of a distinguished voice teacher, he did not attend any music school, taking private lessons instead. After completing his training in piano (with Norma Verrilli), composition (with Arnold Franchetti) and conducting (with Gustav Meier), Sir Antonio worked as a pianist and rehearsal accompanist at opera houses in Europe and the USA. While at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, he attracted the attention of maestro Daniel Barenboim, who would name the gifted young artist his assistant. Following his first conducting experience, in Oslo, at the age of 31 Sir Antonio was appointed music director of Den Norske Opera. He served as music director of the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels, principal guest conductor of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and music director of the Orchestra dellʼAccademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome. In 2019, he and this orchestra appeared to great acclaim at the Prague Spring festival.

He has already established a collaboration with the Czech Philharmonic in the Czech capital—he made his debut at the Rudolfinum in November 2023 as part of the Velvet Revolution Concert, alongside violinist Janine Jansen and the Prague Philharmonic Choir. Two years later, he conducted three concerts there, featuring the Czech premiere of Luigi Dallapiccola’s opera The Prisoner in a concert performance and Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5. In addition to the Czech Philharmonic, during the 2025/2026 season he will collaborate with, among others, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and will make guest appearances with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestra of the Royal Danish Opera.

Sir Antonio Pappano’s wide-ranging discography primarily includes opera albums, yet he has also made numerous recordings of symphonic music, mostly by Romantic composers, as well as other works, with the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Berliner Philharmoniker and other feted orchestras. Since 1995, Sir Antonio has extensively recorded for Warner Classics. Besides the Royal Opera House in London, where he has conducted productions of operas ranging from Baroque to contemporary, Sir Antonio Pappano has recently appeared at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the Wiener Staatsoper, the Staatsoper Berlin and Milan’s La Scala, as well as at the Bayreuther Festspiele.