Bamberger Symphoniker, Jakub Hrůša, Kateřina Kněžíková by Strauss, Mahler, Od (2021/2021), Dirigent Jakub Hrůša, Rudolfinum, Prague, Czech Republic

In a letter to Richard Strauss, Gustav Mahler wrote that they were like two workers digging a tunnel under the same mountain, each beginning on the opposite side but sure to meet in the middle. A musical encounter of these composers at the festival will be accompanied by a rare and unjustly neglected guest – Josef Bohuslav Foerster, a Czech composer and a creative colleague of the two musical giants. This Austro-German-Czech encounter is being presented by the Bamberg Symphony with its chief conductor, Jakub Hrůša. It is truly symbolic that works by great musicians of Central Europe are being performed by an orchestra founded in the wake of the upheavals of post-war Europe. The players of the Bamberg Symphony were largely musicians who had been deported from Prague to Germany, and to this day, the orchestra takes pride in its “Czech sound”. Their guest appearance at the Dvořák Prague Festival is a kind of homecoming for them, and in addition they will be sharing the title of orchestra-in-residence with the Czech Philharmonic. The graceful motion of the captivating Adagietto from Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 will be followed by the Four Last Songs by Richard Strauss. The pensive character of those two works opens the door to Josef Bohuslav Foerster’s Symphony No. 4, a musical depiction of Easter as experienced by a person of deep religious faith. The work is rightly regarded as Foerster’s masterpiece.