Czech Philharmonic • Madrid

Few Czech operas are as enduringly popular as The Bartered Bride by Bedřich Smetana (1824–1884). It has, so to speak, got under our skin, becoming intimately familiar, with character types we still encounter in today’s world. Smetana wrote it between 1863 and 1866 to a libretto by Karel Sabina, his proven collaborator from his first opera The Brandenburgers in Bohemia. This time, however, Smetana wanted to set a lighter story in a comic tone to music. While the libretto was laboriously taking shape, Smetana began, unusually for the period, with the overture; a four-hand piano version was already performed in 1863. He depicts the village festivities and dancing in music that combines homophony with polyphony, sweeps us along at a very fast tempo (Vivacissimo), and sets the stage for the beginning of Act I. The opera was premiered on 30 May 1866 on the stage of Prague’s Provisional Theatre. At the time, the opera still contained spoken dialogue, placing it closer to the Singspiel tradition, and it was still a long way from its final form.

Further revisions of The Bartered Bride mainly involved the ordering of vocal numbers, adding new ones, or deleting others. The third version (1869) rearranged the opera into three acts, while the final fourth version (1870) replaced the spoken dialogue with sung recitatives. The changes reflected the maturing of the composer’s artistic views, responses to critical opinion, and, among other things, the possibility of staging this Czech singspiel abroad for audiences with different musical experience and somewhat different tastes. Opera houses wanted dance numbers and the participation of their ballet troupes. The addition of the orchestral Furiant to Act II and of the Dance of the Comedians to Act III should be understood in this context, as well as in light of Smetana’s intention to emphasise the opera’s Czech national character. In the Furiant, with its alternation between duple and triple metre, Smetana drew inspiration from the folk song Sedlák, sedlák, sedlák, which corresponded particularly well to the character of the peasant Krušina, one of the opera’s protagonists. The Dance of the Comedians brought elements of the circus and acrobatics to the stage, along with the spirit of the harlequinade and a straightforward comic style. For this number, the composer employed the skočná, a lively dance in duple metre. The orchestral numbers from Smetana’s Bartered Bride became popular even in places where his operatic works were less well known, and their spirited, joyous musicality continues to delight audiences to this day.

A graduate of the Moscow Conservatory, Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff created mostly in the 20^th century, but his music – influenced mainly by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky – remains firmly rooted in the late Romantic style. Rachmaninoff himself commented on this: “I cannot cast out the old way of writing and I cannot acquire the new. I have made an intense effort to feel the musical manner of today, but it will not come to me.” Although he composed three operas, an equal number of symphonies, several sacred works, and a number of remarkable songs, he is best known for his piano works, which include four concertos and a number of solo pieces. Rachmaninoff, himself an accomplished pianist, performed with success not only in his homeland but also in Europe and on the American continent. He was also active as a conductor, first in Moscow, where he conducted operas by Glinka and Tchaikovsky at the Bolshoi Theatre, then in Dresden from 1906 to 1909, before making his first major concert tour to the United States. Rachmaninoff did not accept the regime established after the Great October Socialist Revolution in 1917, and soon afterwards left his homeland permanently. He first lived in Europe and in 1935 settled in the United States, where he developed a rich concert career and continued to compose. Although he privately and publicly criticized the Soviet regime, he bore the separation from Russia very hard; his family maintained Russian customs, surrounded themselves with Russian friends, and hired Russian servants. In exile, Rachmaninoff was an ardent patriot, which was especially evident after the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany, when he donated his concert fees to support the Red Army. He died in California just four days before his 70^th birthday.

His very last composition is Symphonic Dances, Op. 45, composed in 1940. Rachmaninoff gave the individual movements of this three-movement work titles seemingly indicating the times of day (Noon – Twilight – Midnight), but in reality it is probably a metaphor related to the stocktaking at the end of his life, when he was already very ill. Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances, whose instrumental embellishments include the use of the alto saxophone as a solo instrument in the first movement, have been choreographed for ballet on several occasions, but more often they are performed as a stand-alone symphonic piece that can make an emotional impact in its own right.

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.