Czech Philharmonic • Karen Gomyo
To begin the evening, Frenzy by the contemporary American composer John Adams will take us into the depths of madness caused by information overload, then at the concert’s end we turn our attention to Pictures at an Exhibition. In between, we will hear the violinist Karen Gomyo, who likes to think about aspects of music the composer has expressed not in the notation, but between the lines.
Programme
John Adams
Frenzy: a short symphony (2023) (Czech premiere)
Max Bruch
Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Op. 26
Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky (arr. by Maurice Ravel)
Pictures at an Exhibition
Performers
Karen Gomyo violin
Semyon Bychkov conductor
Czech Philharmonic
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“There are sounds and ideas suspended in the air, and I find myself overeating, swallowing them up. I can barely manage to write it down on paper”, Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky boasted in a letter to a friend in June 1874. He was already at work on a musical tribute to the painter and architect Viktor Hartmann titled Pictures at an Exhibition. Mussorgsky’s dear friend Hartmann had died in August 1873, and the Academy of Fine Arts in St Petersburg held an exhibition of his works, which the composer attended. Inspired by what he had seen, Mussorgsky decided to transform ten of the images into music. The piano original was not played very often, but when Maurice Ravel arranged the work for orchestra in 1922, it became a hit.
Max Bruch’s First Violin Concerto underwent revisions; creating the work did not come easily. “Work is progressing slowly on my Violin Concerto—I don’t feel very secure in this territory. Do you think writing a violin concerto is too daring?” he wrote to his former teacher Hiller in November 1865. Whatever answer he got back, his many revisions finally paid off. The result was the composer’s most famous work.
The opera Nixon in China probably still remains John Adams’s most famous work, but he was again unafraid to tackle a current topic in his recently created composition Frenzy. “For me, ‘frenzy’ sums up the feeling, at times overwhelming, of contemplating the current world around us, especially as it is imagined in our daily doses of digital news and information, much of which we consume without regard to its subversive and subconscious influence on our mood”, Adams says about the composition written three years ago. He dedicated his “short symphony” to Simon Rattle, but at the Rudolfinum we will hear it performed by Semyon Bychkov.
Performers
Karen Gomyo violin
Born in Tokyo and beginning her musical career in Montréal and New York, violinist Karen Gomyo has recently made Berlin her home. A musician of the highest calibre, the Chicago Tribune praised her as: "…a first-rate artist of real musical command, vitality, brilliance and intensity".
Karen’s 2019/20 season features European debuts with Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin with Cristian Macelaru, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande with Jonathan Nott, Deutsche Radio Philharmonie Saarbrücken Kaiserslautern with Pietari Inkinen, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra with Gergely Madaras and Dresdner Philharmoniker with Roderick Cox.
Other recent European appearances include Philharmonia Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre Symphonique de Radio France, WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln, Danish National Symphony, and in March 2019 Karen opened the Dubai Proms with the BBC Symphony and Ben Gernon. At present Karen makes her debut at the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra with Semyon Bychkov.
Already well established in North America Karen has performed with the New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Minnesota Orchestra, and the symphony orchestras of Detroit, San Francisco, Toronto, Montréal, Vancouver, and Washington D.C. Further afield her popularity in Australasia continued over the last few seasons as she toured with New Zealand Symphony and also appeared with West Australian Symphony Orchestra in Perth, Tasmanian Symphony and in recital at the Sydney Opera House. In Asia she maked her debut with the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra.
Strongly committed to contemporary works, Karen gave the North American premiere of Matthias Pintscher’s Concerto No. 2 Mar’eh with the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington under the baton of the composer, as well as Pēteris Vasks’ Vox Amoris with the Lapland Chamber Orchestra conducted by John Storgårds. In May 2018 Karen performed the world premiere of Samuel Adams’ new Chamber Concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Esa-Pekka Salonen to great critical acclaim. The work was written specifically for Karen and commissioned by the CSO’s ‘Music Now’ series for their 20th anniversary.
Semyon Bychkov conductor
In addition to conducting at Prague’s Rudolfinum, Semyon Bychkov and the Czech Philharmonic in the 2023/2024 season, took the all Dvořák programmes to Korea and across Japan with three concerts at Tokyo’s famed Suntory Hall. In spring, an extensive European tour took the programmes to Spain, Austria, Germany, Belgium, and France and, at the end of year 2024, the Year of Czech Music culminated with three concerts at Carnegie Hall in New York.
Among the significant joint achievements of Semyon Bychkov and the Czech Philharmonic is the release of a 7-CD box set devoted to Tchaikovsky’s symphonic repertoire and a series of international residencies. In 2024, Semjon Byčkov with the Czech Philharmonic concentrated on recording Czech music – a CD was released with Bedřich Smetanaʼs My Homeland and Antonín Dvořákʼs last three symphonies and ouvertures.
Bychkovʼs repertoire spans four centuries. His highly anticipated performances are a unique combination of innate musicality and rigorous Russian pedagogy. In addition to guest engagements with the world’s major orchestras and opera houses, Bychkov holds honorary titles with the BBC Symphony Orchestra – with whom he appears annually at the BBC Proms – and the Royal Academy of Music, who awarded him an Honorary Doctorate in July 2022. Bychkov was named “Conductor of the Year” by the International Opera Awards in 2015 and, by Musical America in 2022.
Bychkov began recording in 1986 and released discs with the Berlin Philharmonic, Bavarian Radio, Royal Concertgebouw, Philharmonia Orchestra and London Philharmonic for Philips. Subsequently a series of benchmark recordings with WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne featured Brahms, Mahler, Rachmaninov, Shostakovich, Strauss, Verdi, Glanert and Höller. Bychkov’s 1993 recording of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin with the Orchestre de Paris continues to win awards, most recently the Gramophone Collection 2021; Wagner’s Lohengrin was BBC Music Magazine’s Record of the Year (2010); and Schmidt’s Symphony No. 2 with the Vienna Philharmonic was BBC Music Magazine’s Record of the Month (2018).
Semyon Bychkov has one foot firmly in the culture of the East and the other in the West. Born in St Petersburg in 1952, he studied at the Leningrad Conservatory with the legendary Ilya Musin. Denied his prize of conducting the Leningrad Philharmonic, Bychkov emigrated to the United States in 1975 and, has lived in Europe since the mid-1980’s. In 1989, the same year he was named Music Director of the Orchestre de Paris, Bychkov returned to the former Soviet Union as the St Petersburg Philharmonic’s Principal Guest Conductor. He was appointed Chief Conductor of the WDR Symphony Orchestra (1997) and Chief Conductor of Dresden Semperoper (1998).
Compositions
John Adams
Frenzy, a short symphony
Max Bruch
Concerto for Violin and Orchestra No. 1 in G minor, Op. 26
Vorspiel. Allegro moderato
Adagio
Finale. Allegro energico
The German composer Max Bruch (1838–1920) began composing at the age of nine and wrote his first symphony at the age of 14. Very soon he became an internationally acclaimed musician, but he was recognized more as a conductor because his compositions were hard to swallow both for the public and critics. He produced more than 200 opuses, including three symphonies, four operas, several instrumental concertos and many choral pieces in the field of sacred and secular music. As a composer, Bruch remained captive of a conservative “school” of German music all his life, and he kept composing in the traditional way still in the 20th century, when the art world had long been fascinated by completely different creative methods.
Bruch’s musical legacy is accepted today with similar embarrassment, and his (almost) only work that is performed on concert stages is the first of his three violin concertos, which on the contrary occupies a very important place in the concerto repertoire and is extremely popular with violin virtuosos and audiences. Bruch composed Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Op. 26 in 1866, when he was music director in Koblenz in the Rhineland. The original version of the composition was premiered the same year on 24 April by Otto von Königlow as soloist and with Bruch conducting. After that, Bruch rewrote the concerto together with the world-famous violinist Joseph Joachim, giving it its final form in which this composition is performed to this day. It is interesting that in this composition Bruch entrusted the solo instrument with a considerably more important role than the orchestra, which serves as mere accompaniment. The concert begins with a lyrical violin cadence, followed by an equally lyrical dialogue between soloist and orchestra. The first movement leads directly into the slow second movement, which is melodically the most inventive of the whole composition. A faster tempo comes with the third movement, which has the playful character of an energetic dance and brings the work to a rousing virtuoso close.
Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky
Pictures at an Exhibition
V polovině devatenáctého století v Petrohradě působilo volné sdružení pěti ruských skladatelů pod názvem Mocná hrstka. Jeho členové usilovali o vytvoření národní ruské hudby a za svého duchovního vůdce považovali hudebního kritika, historika a archeologa Vladimira Stasova. Vůdčím skladatelem Mocné hrstky byl Milij Alexejevič Balakirev, díky němuž se členem sdružení stal také jeden z jeho žáků – Modest Petrovič Musorgskij (1839–1881). Musorgskij byl v zásadě hudebním samoukem, svým originálním kompozičním projevem však předešel dobu, ve které žil; jeho tvorba se stala inspirací francouzským skladatelům na přelomu století (především Debussymu a Ravelovi), zejména však ovlivnil hlavní představitele ruské hudby první poloviny 20. století – Šostakoviče a Prokofjeva.
Své nejznámější klavírní dílo zkomponoval Musorgskij v roce 1874 jako hudební památku na náhle zesnuvšího přítele, ruského výtvarníka a architekta Viktora Hartmana. Oba umělce seznámil již zmíněný Vladimir Stasov, v jehož režii byla pár měsíců po nešťastné události v Akademii výtvarných umění v Petrohradě uspořádána výstava prezentující přes čtyři sta Hartmanových knižních ilustrací, cestovních náčrtů, architektonických a kostýmních návrhů. Pod dojmem návštěvy této výstavy a pod vlivem emocí ze ztráty blízkého člověka zkomponoval Musorgskij během šesti týdnů klavírní suitu Obrázky z výstavy.
Deset klavírních miniatur tak představuje vybrané Hartmanovy obrazy, které většinou vznikaly na cestách po Polsku, Francii a Itálii. Tmelícím prvkem suity jsou variované mezihry – Promenády, jejichž charakter je vždy ovlivněn předcházejícím obrazem, a které znázorňují samotného skladatele coby návštěvníka výstavy. Většina Hartmanových obrazů je dnes bohužel ztracená. Jejich hudební podoba vytvořená Musorgským nám však přináší vskutku pestré náměty: Skřítek (Gnomus) je trpaslík těžkopádně se pohybující na křivých nožkách, Starý hrad je monumentální středověká stavba, před níž stojí zpívající trubadúr, poté si v pařížské zahradě Tuileries hrají děti, Bydlo popisuje veliký polský vůz tažený voly, skica Tanec kuřátek ve skořápce byla Hartmanem vytvořena jako kostýmní návrh pro balet Trilby, Samuel Goldenberg a Schmuyle jsou dva Židé, jeden bohatý a vztekající se a druhy chudý a dotíravý.
Následující obraz Trh v Limoges představuje hádající se francouzské prodavačky na tržišti, a jako i v předcházející části je zde hudebními prostředky zpodobněna lidská řeč. Hrůzostrašnou atmosféru, motiv smrti a portrét zesnulého Hartmana, který s lampou v ruce prohlíží pařížské podzemí, navozuje obraz Katakomby s podtitulem S mrtvými řečí mrtvých. Domek na kuří nožce, v němž přebývá pohádková Baba Jaga létající na hmoždíři, nás přivádí k finální části skladby, jíž je Velká brána Kijevská, která nikdy nebyla postavena. Šlo o Hartmanův architektonický projekt městské brány s kostelem a zvonicí; stavba měla připomínat atentát na ruského cara Alexandra II.
Suita Obrázky z výstavy patří mezi základní klavírní přednesovou literaturu; široké kulturní veřejnosti je spíše známa orchestrální verze suity instrumentovaná francouzským skladatelem Mauricem Ravelem. Je to nejčastěji hraná verze, není však jedinou orchestrální úpravou tohoto Musorgského díla.