Czech Philharmonic • Giovanni Antonini

Magdalena Kožená, Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, is one of the most successful Czech singers of today. Although she now lives in Berlin, she often comes back to the Czech Republic to join the Czech Philharmonic, either together with her husband Simon Rattle or for a concert on her own, this time conducted by Giovanni Antonini. She has collaborated with this conductor for a long time, appearing, inter alia, in the Classical repertoire. In 2006 she went on tour with Antonini’s ensemble Il Giardino Armonico; in 2019 her performance in the program with Mozart and Gluck arias with Antonini and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment was a great success.

Kožená was born in Brno, where she attended the Brno Philharmonic Children’s Choir Kantiléna which (according to her own words) shaped her not only as a musician but also as a human being, and she also began piano lessons. After graduating from the Brno Conservatory and the Bratislava Academy of Performing Arts, she began to collaborate with local ensembles specializing in early music. The impulse to cross over the border of Baroque music, which also opened the door for her to the international music world, came in 1995 when she won the prestigious W. A. Mozart International Competition in Salzburg. Another milestone was her exclusive recording contract with Deutsche Grammophon, which presented a crucial opportunity for Kožená to get acquainted with the leading musical figures. Since then, she has released a number of recordings of various repertoire (including Czech music), for which she has been awarded major prizes (Gramophone Award, Echo Klassik, Diapason d’Or, etc.).

Kožená has given recitals in the world’s most prestigious concert halls, such as Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, Concergebouw Amsterdam, etc., has worked with Claudio Abbado, Pierre Boulez, Nikolaus Harnoncourt and other renowned conductors, and has also devoted herself to opera (regular guest appearances at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, Berlin’s Staatsoper, etc.). On top of that, she has also performed in the sphere of “non-artificial” (natural) music such as swing and flamenco. Also impressive is the breadth of her classical repertoire, which ranges from Baroque music and collaboration with early music ensembles, the Classical and Romantic repertoire, for which she has become known, inter alia, as a promoter of Czech music, to contemporary music. However, she does not forget about living in the non-musical world either, because, as she says, “I sing stories about what happens in life, and if I didn’t experience any of that – motherhood, for example – I would feel that I had nothing to convey to the audience.”

A native of Milan, Giovanni Antonini has long been acclaimed worldwide for his innovative and polished approach to performing the Baroque and Classical repertoire while fully respecting the precepts of historically informed interpretation. However, the path of early music had not been his first choice of study. He had originally applied to the conservatoire as a violinist, and it was only because he did not succeed at his audition that he ultimately began studying the recorder, and he became a master of the instrument. It was thanks to his study of the flute at the Civica Scuola di Musica that Antonini fully discovered the world of Baroque music. In addition, as he himself recalls, it was a great advantage that as a flautist specialising in historical interpretation, he did not have many artistic models to rely on and simply imitate (after all, in the 1980s the field was still in its infancy), so he had to seek out his own interpretive approaches. He found further support in his studies at the Centre de Musique Ancienne in Geneva, but the urge never abandoned him to penetrate truly deeply into the music and to create his own language, which is now so appreciated for its uniqueness.

In 1985 he founded his own Baroque ensemble Il Giardino Armonico, with which he still appears all around the world in the dual role of soloist (whether on the recorder or the Baroque transverse flute) and conductor. Overall, perhaps the most ambitious project he threw himself into a few years back with the Basel Chamber Orchestra was to record the complete symphonies of Haydn, and to finish by the year 2032, the 300th anniversary of the composer’s birth. The project Haydn2032, of which Antonini is the artistic director, is daring not only for its scope (Haydn wrote 107 Symphonies, so it is necessary to release 2 CDs with three or four symphonies every year!), but also because of the interpretive difficulties of Haydn’s music. “Haydn is very difficult to perform well because many of the interpretive paths can sound boring. But Haydn is not boring, it’s just the matter of finding the key to the correct interpretation,” explains Antonini. So far, 14 CDs have appeared (most recently this September), so the Haydn symphonic repertoire he has already recorded, rehearsed, or prepared has also influenced the programming of Antonini’s concerts in recent years.

We will also be hearing Haydn at today’s concert, which is, among other things, a continuation of cooperation from this past February, when he performed the music of Telemann and Mozart with the Czech Philharmonic and the Czech Philharmonic Youth Orchestra. Of course, Antonini does not overlook other greats masters of the 16th through the 18th centuries, whose works he has recorded with Il Giardino Armonico (including the Vivaldi concerto on today’s programme) or performed in concert with such major orchestras as the Berlin Philharmonic, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw Orchestra, and the London Symphony Orchestra and with renowned soloists like Cecilia Bartoli, Giuliano Carmignola, Isabelle Faust, and Katia and Marielle Labèque. He also devotes himself to opera; in recent years, for example, we have been able to see him at Milan’s La Scala (Giulio Cesare), the Zurich Opera House (Idomeneo), and the Theater an der Wien (Rappresentatione di Anima, et di Corpo). He is also the artistic director of the Polish music festival Wratislavia Cantans and the principal guest conductor of the Basel Chamber Orchestra.

Příroda znamenala pro Ludwiga van Beethovena (1770–1827) útočiště a při dlouhých procházkách v okolí Vídně také nalézal inspiraci. „Ptáte se mne, odkud beru své myšlenky? To nejsem schopen s jistotou říci; přicházejí nevolány, nepřímo, bezprostředně, mohl bych je uchopit rukama v přírodě, v lese, na procházkách, v tichu noci, za časného rána, podníceny náladami,“ jak údajně prohlásil. Ve svém svérázném panteisticky orientovaném duchovním smýšlení vnímal přírodu jako odraz Boží činnosti a její prožívání jako prostor pro pociťování sounáležitosti s Bohem. Ne náhodou proto zamýšlel vyjádřit svůj obdivný vztah k přírodě v hudebním díle a navázat tak na tradici hudebních děl 17. a 18. století s přírodní tematikou.

Jeho Symfonie č. 6 F dur op. 68, „Pastorální“ v sobě integruje jak tradici instrumentálních děl přinášejících idylickou atmosféru života pastýřů, tj. pastorále, tak využívání ustálených rétorických figur evokujících určité přírodní děje. Bouře, která je zde užita, byla v hudbě 18. století častým a velmi charakteristickým elementem. Beethoven však svým dílem překračuje starší estetiku usilující o přímé napodobení přírody, snaží se o zachycení emocí, které příroda vzbuzuje. Na zadní stranu titulního listu prvních houslí zaznamenal příznačný podtitul symfonie: „Vzpomínka na venkovský život (spíše výraz pocitů nežli malba).“ Beethoven svou Šestou symfonii komponoval v letech 1807–1808 souběžně s Pátou. Obě symfonie byly společně premiérovány 22. prosince 1808 v Divadle na Vídeňce.

Pastorální symfonie je netradičně pětivětá, před finále je totiž vložena zmiňovaná Bouře. První, sonátová věta nese od Beethovena podtitul Probuzení radostných pocitů při příchodu na venkov. Její pozitivní ladění spojené s venkovským prostředím je podpořeno hudebními prvky evokujícími hru vesnických muzikantů – časté harmonie na základních funkcích, opakování krátkých hudebních motivů, houpavá melodika. Pomalá věta je idylickou žánrovou Scénou u potoka, založenou na charakteristickém triolovém motivu proudění vody, k němuž se připojuje zpěv ptáků. Slavík (flétna), křepelka (hoboj) a kukačka (klarinet) větu dokonce uzavřou sólistickými kadencemi. Scherzo, nazvané Veselé setkání venkovanů, je temperamentním selským kolovým tancem, který nečekaně přejde v působivou Bouři. Když se běsnící živel uklidní, do jeho posledních dozvuků zaznívá zbožně znějící chorálová melodie, k níž si Beethoven do jedné ze skic připsal slova „Pane, děkujeme ti,“ a která je přechodem k finále s podtitulem Šťastné a vděčné pocity po bouři. Jeho poklidná a jasná atmosféra nás navrací do nálady úvodní věty a symetricky uzavírá celé dílo.