Plavi Ciklus Dvořák / Strauss by Dvořák, Strauss, Vin 23 Febr. 2024, De la (2024/2024), Dirijor Jun Märkl, Vatroslav Lisinski Concert Hall, Zagreb, Croatia

Let's spend a wonderful summer day in the kingdom of nature , in a gentle and magical village idyll. Composer Antonín Dvořák walks through Czech fields and forests, listens to the sounds of nature and brilliantly brings them to life in the score of this program overture. In the original, the piece is the first part of the cycle Nature, Life and Love, but the composer decided to perform and publish them separately during his lifetime. Dvořák himself conducted the first performance in Prague in 1892 to a standing ovation from the audience. Seven years later, his Symphony in G major was created, which we could call a symphony of contrasts. The lyricist and dreamer Dvořák begins the first movement with a melancholic melody, but after only a few bars he leads us into a new mood, bright, full of joy and happiness. We hear the same melancholic motif later as a brass fanfare. This is just one example of the composer's masterful play with motifs. According to some biographers, Dvořák owned a country estate in southern Bohemia. This is probably where his love for nature and constant listening to folk songs that we hear so often in his works originate. An example of this is the third movement of the symphony, which is a dreamy ballad, but ends with a cheerful polka. It is also worth mentioning the second movement with the wonderful solo of the first violin. As a great connoisseur of orchestration, in the fourth movement, Dvořák brings us themes from the first, but with completely different instrumentation. The finale of this Symphony is a real explosion of joy, Concerto for violin and orchestra in D minor is, in the truest sense of the word, a hidden gem in the composer's oeuvre. Richard Strauss composed it when he was only 18 years old in 1882 in the manner of late romanticism. Madi Strauss plays with a powerful first movement, a fairy-tale second and a fluttering third. But already in that boy's work we hear the genius, wealth and originality of the future composer of numerous masterpieces. The concert was first performed by his cousin Benno Walter in Vienna with the piano accompaniment of the young Strauss. We don't have the opportunity to hear it often in the concert repertoire, and this is a real opportunity to enjoy this imaginative composition!