2024-06-07 03:56:01
The long-awaited premiere of a composition by Miroslav Srnka, a virtuoso efficiency by the violinist Josef Špaček and the organ and bells on the finish. The Prague Spring Pageant ended its 79th 12 months spectacularly and dramaturgically boldly. The primary European efficiency of Srnka’s composition Superorganisms was complemented by the not often carried out symphonic poem Praga by Josef Suk and a violin concerto reconstructed by musicologist Leoš Janáček entitled Putování dušičky.
David Robertson, an American with an unquenchable curiosity in fashionable and up to date music, stood on the conductor’s podium this Monday in Prague’s Municipal Home. Two years in the past on the competition he premiered the composition Movis by Michal Rataj and the great Fourth Symphony by self-grown composer Charles Ives from the USA.
Robertson, who has been repeatedly mooted as a doable chief conductor of the New York Philharmonic, has amassed a wealth of expertise conducting up to date music throughout his eight-year stint with Ensemble Intercontemporain. Years in the past, he carried out the composition My Life With out Me by Miroslav Srnka with this high ensemble. Whether or not he’s conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra or the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, he makes certain to have a optimistic strategy stuffed with care and a pure inclination in direction of pedagogical management. The New York Occasions described him as “a trainer from God” in 2008, which Robertson confirms along with his six years as head of the conducting division on the famend Juilliard College in New York.
Every work has been fastidiously studied from a musical and historical-social standpoint, and through rehearsals he passes his information on to the orchestra gamers in an attractive method. They acted like good outdated associates with the members of the Czech Philharmonic on Monday.
Miroslav Srnka has additionally been constructing a relationship with the primary Czech orchestra for a while, for which in 2019, simply earlier than the outbreak of the worldwide pandemic, he performed the items referred to as transfer 01 and transfer 03. Srnka additionally twice chaired the jury of the Czech Philharmonic composition competitors, within the second 12 months David was additionally concerned Robertson. Nevertheless, Srnko’s composition Superorganisms was created on the instigation of Kirill Petrenko, chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic and the person who helped Srnko to a global profession when he staged his opera South Pole in 2015 with singers Roland Villazón and Thomas Hampson within the lead roles. The order of the Berlin Philharmonic was joined by 4 different vital orchestras: the Tokyo NHK Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Orchester de Paris and the Czech Philharmonic.
Nonetheless the identical story
We all know superorganisms from nature, they’re colonies of ants, bees, corals, fungi. For people, the extent of coordination and cooperation between particular person members of the neighborhood is fascinating. The doe sees in them a sure analogy with the up to date world. Based on him, whereas up to now we centered extra on particular person issues, these days it’s essential to understand issues on a broader social, political and environmental scale. As within the case of ants, every of us has very restricted prospects, however in bigger teams we’re in a position to obtain extraordinary outcomes.
Nevertheless, the Czech composer emphasizes that he’s not an activist. It might be too simplistic and unsuitable to see Superorganisms as a political gesture, identical to his older Overheating wasn’t only a music about local weather change and Standstill about coronavirus isolation. The creator goes into better abstraction, he’s primarily within the prospects of sound as such, in his palms the orchestra transforms right into a prototype of a human exact superorganism, through which every participant participates within the ensuing sound picture along with his distinctive – however not solo – half. In it, the person dissolves within the sound neighborhood of the entire.
In any case, this may very well be mentioned about many of the items rehearsed by the orchestra. “For a number of compositions from current years, I preserve repeating the identical story, how as soon as a few years in the past I used to be impressed by the flight of birds, making an attempt to switch their motion into an natural motion of sound, because it grows in every subsequent composition,” Srnka specifies her strategy in an interview for Prague Spring. “In Superorganisms it jumped to a brand new degree, the cloud of miniature sound factors is meant to kind a sort of collective sound alive in itself,” he provides.
It was the motion of sound inside the orchestra and the acoustic area of the Smetana Corridor of the Municipal Home that was probably the most placing facet of Monday’s launch of Superorganisms. In every of the 4 components – which Srnka describes as 4 separate, in a different way organized superorganisms – the sound traveled elegantly and organically from the middle to the perimeters, from left to proper, from decrease positions to increased ones.
The creator’s compositional craft is indeniable, due to him he is ready to discover and resound what he calls fluid consonance via orchestral sound.
Miroslav Srnka is likely one of the most well-known residing Czech composers. | Picture: Petra Hajská
“Consonance is traditionally understood as one thing static. A serious third is consonant. A serious chord is consonant. However to me it isn’t static: it is a discipline that strikes each in time and within the measure of that consonance—a sort of undulating carpet throughout which I am strolling,” the composer defined in Harmonie journal.
The undulating carpets of the 4 superorganisms pulsed often on each the macro and micro scales. Simply as when ants, one can zoom out and in, from watching a single ant to watching the trajectory of the complete colony’s motion, in Srnko’s rating it is usually doable to give attention to the entire or particular person elements.
At the least it ought to be. Sadly, the acoustics of the gorgeous artwork nouveau Smetana Corridor are fairly insufficient for the music of the twentieth and twenty first centuries, and in spite of everything, even the historic ones, together with Suk’s Praga, don’t absolutely stand out right here. And so Srnka’s sonically plastic Superorganisms radiated to the Prague viewers solely the macro view, many particulars have been erased. The efficient and spectacular endings of the third and fourth components stood out, it was doable to sense the overflow of sound strains between the person teams of devices, together with the quite a few percussion devices (4 marimbas!) or two accordion gamers, whose half initially of the second half evoked an digital sound.
Nevertheless, the restricted probability to focus the ear on particular brokers meant that the 4 components may appear much more monotonous and comparable to one another than they really are.
The listeners could have friendlier situations in Paris and Berlin, the place Superoganisms might be heard in June and February below the baton of the celebrated Klaus Mäkela (within the corridor of the Paris Philharmonic), respectively the unique initiator of the order, Kirill Petrenko (within the constructing of the Berlin Philharmonic). We now have to attend just a few extra years for Prague’s “ultimate Srnka”. Development of the brand new Vltava Philharmonic live performance corridor ought to start in 2027.
4 marimbas have been included within the intensive instrumentation of percussion devices. | Picture: Petra Hajská
Sensible violins and a monumental end
The twenty-minute premiere crammed the primary half of Monday night. Within the longer, second one, the Czech Philharmonic and violin virtuoso Josef Špaček carried out works by Leoš Janáček, Antonín Dvořák and Josef Suk. Other than Dvořák’s spectacular Mazurka for violin and orchestra in E minor, these have been works not carried out fairly often.
It’s due to Špaček that Janáček’s Journey of a Soul seems extra typically on applications. He recorded it with conductor Jiří Bělohlávek in 2015 and launched it on an album. The piece for violin and orchestra was reconstructed from the creator’s sketches by the “janáčkologists” Miloš Štědroň and Leoš Faltus, it’s not the complete live performance, however a fraction of about ten minutes.
Conductor David Robertson and violinist Josef Špaček. | Picture: Petra Hajská
Each connoisseurs respectfully create a naked instrumentation typical of Janáček, which in different phrases implies that the solo violin is commonly accompanied by just a few devices, a bunch of strings, a bunch of two clarinets, and the sound of the complete orchestra is dosed. This labored properly by way of dramaturgy within the neighborhood of the sound-saturated Srnka.
Janáček might be performed very bitingly, succinctly, succinctly, Špaček can do all that, however he accentuates the lyricism of the composer’s musical speech extra, and within the case of the Wandering of the Soul, particularly in all of the passages in very excessive positions, it has a really perfect impact. In any case, Špaček’s idea can be most well-liked by one of many authors of the reconstruction, Miloš Štědroň. At a seminar on the Ševčík Academy in Horažďovice, he as soon as performed Špaček’s recording whereas describing the creation of the complete fragment, which the violinist found to his nice shock solely when he arrived on the seminar barely late.
Špaček understands Dvořák’s Mazurek as a type of barely longer addition to Janáček’s too quick live performance piece. Within the corridor of the Municipal Home, he earned probably the most thunderous ovation after his good efficiency. Music writer Franz Simrock, who commissioned the piece in 1879, was proper then and could be proper right this moment: Antonín Dvořák’s works are field workplace hits.
Josef Špaček has a long-standing heat relationship with the Czech Philharmonic, he labored as concertmaster for eight years. He demonstrated this reality within the Municipal Home with associates from the orchestra with an encore, once more by Dvořák. Along with Jan Fišer, Eva Krestová and Ivan Vokáč, they beautifully performed a sentimental association of the tender When my outdated mom taught me to sing. In all probability to steadiness the daring begin, but additionally the tip, with some sort of romantic hit.
The symphonic poem Praga by Josef Suk is a monumental work constructed on a musical theme harking back to the Hussite chant Who’re God’s Warriors, which continually modifications and varies. Suk builds the mysterious ambiance of the composition, which final appeared on the Prague Spring in 2005, in a sluggish, barely menacing introduction.
Praga is a contradictory work. Enthralling passages alternate with considerably clueless episodes. At the least that is the way it felt at Monday’s live performance, throughout which continually gradating and turbulent surfaces rolled over one another with out a clear final result. One of many vital moments of the variable composition is a sort of dignified lull, throughout which a powerful chant is heard solely in brass devices. Sadly, it did not prove completely both.
Would the efficiency of the piece, which is demanding for the orchestra and the conductor, go higher within the Dvořák Corridor of the Rudolfinum, a barely extra acoustically pleasant corridor? In all probability sure, however custom and a better variety of gross sales shops converse fairly understandably in favor of the Municipal Home.
On the closing apotheosis of the piece, in response to up to date evaluation, Prague seems in “dazzling brightness and its glory touches the heavens”. That is backed up by hammer strikes on tube bells and organ chimes. Regardless of some weak moments, the ultimate live performance of the 79th Prague Spring actually ended spectacularly. The inclusion of Superorganisms and Praga was dangerous, not everybody welcomed such a daring dramaturgy of varied rustling and noise. Hopefully, the organizers will persevere and the presentation of works much less anchored within the canon along with premieres, whether or not Czech, European or world premieres, will change into the foreign money of the ultimate concert events.
Ultimate live performance of the 79th Prague Spring
Czech Philharmonic Orchestra
David Robertson – dirigent
Josef Špaček – violin
Municipal Home, Prague, June 3.