Czech Philharmonic • Mao Fujita
It has been 80 years since the end of the Second World War and 50 since the death of Shostakovich. In commemoration of both, we will hear the composer’s Eighth Symphony, performances of which were banned in the Soviet Union because of its bleakness. First, however, making his return to the Rudolfinum in Strauss’s Burleske is Mao Fujita, whom critics call a rising world-class pianist.
Programme
Richard Strauss
Burlesque for piano and orchestra in D minor, TrV 145 (17')
Burlesque for piano and orchestra in D minor, TrV 145 (17')
Richard Strauss
A rebel of musical forms, a pioneer of modern harmony, and a master of the symphonic poem, Richard Strauss (1864–1949) was as a kindred spirit of Gustav Mahler and an admirer of Johannes Brahms in his youth and of Richard Wagner in the later years of his successful composing and conducting career.
Strauss was never particularly drawn to composing works for piano and orchestra. He actually wrote only three including pair of works from 1925 and 1928 associated with the famed Austrian pianist Paul Wittgenstein, who had lost his right arm during the First World War. It was he who commissioned the first of these concertos from Strauss—the Parergon on Sinfonia domestica. The Greek word parergon means a work that is a byproduct or supplement, and it is, in fact, based on musical material from Strauss’s successful 1904 symphonic poem describing daily life in his household. Wittgenstein also premiered the other concerto titled Panathenäenzug (Panathenaic Parade), but the best known and most popular of Strauss’s piano works turned out to be a work he had written a full four decades earlier.
Strauss composed his Burleske in 1885 while employed in the Thuringian town Meiningen as the assistant conductor under Hans von Bülow, an important composer, conductor, and pianist who was Strauss’s mentor and gave him significant support early in his career. It was to him that Strauss dedicated his Burleske, originally titled Scherzo in D minor, but Von Bülow refused to learn it, regarding it is technically unplayable and too “Lisztian”. Strauss attempted to play the piano part himself, but after the first rehearsal with orchestra, he set the work aside. He returned to it a few years later and offered it to the pianist Eugen d’Albert, who was impressed by the Burleske and performed it in 1892 after some minor revisions by the composer.
In October 1885, Johannes Brahms premiered his Fourth Symphony in Meiningen. For the young Strauss, witnessing this extraordinary moment was something of a formative experience. Of all of the influences on Strauss at the time, that of Brahms is therefore the most apparent in the Burleske. In the composition in one movement lasting about 20 minutes, dramatic sections alternate with playfully melodic passages. The music makes a fresh, virtuosic impression, and it gives the performer room to demonstrate technical perfection and sensitivity for mood and expression. In terms of its form, however, the Burleske aligns itself more with the legacy of the symphonic poem and foreshadows Strauss’s further development as the composer who would develop that musical genre to unprecedented dimensions.
— Intermission —
Dmitri Shostakovich
Symphony No. 8 in C minor, Op. 65 (61')
Performers
Mao Fujita
piano
With an innate musical sensitivity and naturalness to his artistry, 26-year old pianist Mao Fujita has already impressed many leading musicians as one of those special talents which come along only rarely, equally at home in Mozart as the major romantic repertoire.
Born in Tokyo, he began piano lessons at the age of five and won his first international prize in 2010 at the World Classic in Taiwan. While still studying at the Tokyo College of Music in 2017, he took First Prize at the prestigious Concours International de Piano Clara Haskil in Switzerland, which brought him to the attention of the international music community for the first time. He was also the Silver Medalist at the 2019 Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow.
Fujita has been invited to appear in recital at major international festivals and made US recital debut at Carnegie Hall in January 2023. Recent orchestral highlights include performances with the Gewandhausorchester, Munich Philharmonic, Royal Philharmonic or Royal Concertgebouw. In November 2021, Fujita signed an exclusive multi-album deal with Sony Classical International (Mozart’s complete piano sonatas, 72 Preludes by Chopin, Scriabin, and Yashiro). He is a member of Konzerthaus Dortmund’s series "Junge Wilde" from the 24/25 season.
Semyon Bychkov conductor
Czech Philharmonic
Student Programme
Dates and tickets
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This concert will be broadcast live on medici.tv and on October 11 at 9 p.m. on Mezzo Live.
“I feel eternal pain for those who were killed by Hitler, but I feel no less pain for those killed on Stalin’s orders. I suffer for everyone who was tortured, shot, or starved to death. There were millions of them in our country before the war with Hitler began. The war brought much new sorrow and much new destruction, but I haven’t forgotten the terrible pre-war years. That is what my symphonies are about, including Number Eight.”
– Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich
It is no wonder that Shostakovich preferred to discuss his Eighth Symphony publicly only as an attempt to depict the tragedy of the Second World War, which took the lives of millions of Russians. The work’s gloomy mood was ill suited for the Soviet regime’s propaganda. The symphony was withdrawn from the repertoire, and it was officially banned in 1948. It did not return to concert halls until eight years later.
Richard Strauss’s Burleske for piano and orchestra did not have an easy time reaching listeners either. The young composer wrote the work originally titled Scherzo in D minor in 1886 for the pianist and conductor Hans von Bülow, who had secured the still youthful Strauss a conducting post with the Meiningen Court Orchestra.
Bülow, however, called the work unplayable and refused to learn it. Ultimately, the composer himself played the solo part in Meiningen. The work waited three years for its next performance, when the pianist Eugen d’Albert persuaded Strauss to simplify the piece, earning the dedication of the revised version of the Scherzo, now with its new title Burleske.
This is not the first encounter between the Japanese pianist Mao Fujita and the Czech Philharmonic. In 2023, he took part in a tour of Asia with the orchestra and Semyon Bychkov. He again played Dvořák’s Piano Concerto under Jakub Hrůša’s baton at the BBC Proms at Royal Albert Hall in August 2024. A month later, he gave a recital at Prague’s Rudolfinum.