2024-05-25 02:39:12
When the conductor Alena Hron carried out on the debut night of the Prague Spring pageant final 12 months, she received over the viewers along with her enthusiasm, signed a contract with the IMG Artists company, and above all turned the primary Czech chief conductor of a symphony orchestra in historical past – beginning subsequent season, she is going to lead the South Bohemian Philharmonic.
This 12 months’s debutant with the baton is the younger Jiří Habart. It is going to be carried out on Could 21 within the Dvořák Corridor of the Rudolfinum.
The debut of the Prague Spring was created ten years in the past on the initiative of the previous president of the inventive council of the pageant, in any other case the chief conductor of the Czech Philharmonic, Jiří Bělohlávek. The goal is to allow probably the most promising younger conductors to point out their artwork at the start of their careers and set up cooperation with main our bodies.
The 32-year-old native of Frýdek-Místek, Habart, has lately been profitable in lots of competitions and is more and more approached by European orchestras for cooperation. Final 12 months was a turning level, when he turned one of many three finalists within the prestigious competitors of the well-known philanthropist Donatella Flick for conductors below the age of thirty in London, the place below his baton the London Symphony Orchestra carried out the well-known Tempest and Solveig’s music from the orchestral suite Peer Gynt by Edvard Grieg. “He actually discovered himself – and his conducting of the orchestra in a inexperienced turtleneck had a kick,” composer Lawrence Dunn wrote about Habart’s efficiency for Bachtrack. Jiří Rožeň was the final Czech artist to succeed in the finals of the Donatella Flick competitors in 2014.
Final 12 months, Habart additionally positioned fifth within the Zoltán Kodály Conducting Competitors in Debrecen, Hungary, and picked up a number of particular awards – from the Hungarian Opera, which invited him to collaborate the next season on Dvořák’s Rusalka, and two main native orchestras. He was additionally chosen amongst six candidates to audition for the put up of assistant conductor of the Elbe Philharmonic in Hamburg. He’ll current a number of compositions, whose distinctive staging received him success at competitions, on the Prague Spring.
From violinist to conductor
Jiří Habart began his musical profession on the age of twelve at elementary artwork faculty enjoying the violin, which he then studied on the Vejvanovský Conservatory in Kroměříž within the class of Karel Janeček.
Jiří Habart experiences music strongly. | Picture: Jan Zavadil
On the Janáček Academy of Performing Arts in Brno, he continued to review conducting below Jakub Klecker, Tomáš Hanus and choirmaster with Blanka Juhaňáková. Nonetheless, he didn’t begrudge the bow and took the baroque violin to review below the steerage of the famend virtuoso Lenka Torgersen, concertmaster of the Collegium Marianum ensemble. He nonetheless has a relationship with baroque music, he says that he even likes to hearken to it in personal.
He accomplished grasp courses with Tomáš Netopil, Kirk Trevor, Zsolt Nagy and Marko Stringer. He’s additionally the holder of the Bayreuther Festspiele 2014 scholarship. From the 2019/2020 season, Habart has been working within the opera firm of the Moravian-Silesian Nationwide Theater in Ostrava, the place he has carried out, for instance, the ballets Don Quixote, Harmful Acquaintances and Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker. From the opera works, he introduced Verdi’s Nabucco, Rossini’s The Labourer of Seville and Massenet’s Manon. Lately, he has additionally penetrated extra into the Czech repertoire, within the Moravian-Silesian Theater he performed Smetana’s Two Widows, The Bartered Bride, Dalibor and Dvořák’s Branibury in Bohemia.
Baroque music didn’t miss him even in Ostrava, the place he studied stage works by composers Claudio Monteverdi and Henry Purcell for premiere performances.
On the Prague Dvořák Competition in 2020, he represented Tomáš Netopil as an assistant throughout the efficiency of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.
Jiří Habart has already carried out the suite from Peer Gynt by composer Edvard Grieg on the London Donatella Flick competitors with the London Symphony Orchestra. | Video: London Symphony Orchestra
Roaming Europe
On the Prague Spring, Habart could have the Prague Philharmonia below his baton in an expanded solid comparable to a classical symphony orchestra. The conductor exaggeratingly calls the numerous repertoire Toulky Europe, as he composed it from the works of a number of composers of various nationalities. For him, additionally they have a private connection to different international locations by which he performed them.
Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy’s youthful energetic prelude to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Evening’s Dream, which is likely one of the composer’s early works – he wrote it when he was solely sixteen – might be performed first.
“I am near the lyrical romantic shade from the world of magic and fantasy, that is why I selected this piece for the opening, which isn’t performed fairly often,” says Habart about this system, by which he had kind of a free hand in selecting. Though few folks within the native cultural circle are aware of Mendelssohn’s Marriage ceremony March, the Midsummer Overture doesn’t seem a lot within the repertoire of home orchestras. However, it’s an efficient, sonorous and grateful work.
French violist Sào Soulez Larivière, winner of the 2023 Prague Spring Worldwide Music Competitors, will carry out as a soloist on the live performance, who selected the Concerto for Viola and Orchestra by the late Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki for this system with Habart. “It remembers the legacy of Simón Bolívar as an emblem of liberation and independence,” says the soloist in regards to the composition, which had its world premiere in 1983 in Caracas, Venezuela. Bolívar was a nineteenth century basic and politician.
Within the second half of this system, the debutant selected compositions that introduced him success at worldwide competitions. The second suite from the Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg’s scenic music for the drama Peer Gynt, with which Habart made it to the finals of the London competitors, might be heard. It additionally consists of Solvajžina’s tender music, usually carried out individually.
As a reminiscence of the Hungarian competitors, Habart selected Dances from Galanta by Zoltán Kodály, which he studied along with others on the competitors in Debrecen, however within the second spherical he in the end most popular one other work. “It’s such a virtuoso ‘cherry’, however on the similar time very tough and demanding for the orchestra and the conductor. Once I heard the piece for the primary time, I used to be fully captivated. I hope it’ll have the identical impact on the listeners,” he says.
He considers it most necessary to have the ability to seize the religious content material of the compositions. “In fact, I need to have a exact method, however I additionally need to convey the sturdy ideas and feelings of the authors, which nonetheless resonate for 200 or 300 years and enchantment to us for the reason that works have been written. However I do not attempt to make a present for the viewers, I somewhat let the music carry me , which guides the conductor to expression,” says Habart about his method.
“Generally I’ve somewhat extra expressive facial expressions, as a result of I really feel the music strongly and I feel it additionally evokes the gamers to know, even with out phrases, what emotion I need to specific. Conducting is just not solely in regards to the motion of the arms, however about what radiates from you. That’s the manner , which I attempt to uncover – to have an emotion in myself and be capable to translate it into the orchestra and the gamers. It may be very summary, however it’s about chemistry and speak to,” he provides.
Live performance
(Organized by the Prague Spring pageant)
Jiří Habart & Prague Philharmonic
Rudolfinum, Could 21