An evening where the present meets musical tradition. The program features a work by Czech composer Martin Klusák, Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto — full of power and emotion — and Krzysztof Penderecki’s Fourth Symphony “Adagio”, which blends a modern musical language with the legacy of great symphonic traditions.

Martin Klusák
New commissioned work for the JPO (Czech premiere)

Ludwig van Beethoven
Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, Op. 37

Krzysztof Penderecki
Symphony No. 4 “Adagio”

Lukáš Vondráček – piano
Janáček Philharmonic Ostrava
Lawrence Foster – conductor

The work of Martin Klusák, one of the leading voices of the younger generation of Czech composers, spans a wide range from composition and sound design to film, television, radio, and original musical and intermedia projects. His compositions have achieved success both at home and abroad. Last year, his work was performed at the Prague Spring Festival by the renowned ensemble Klangforum Wien.

Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto stands as one of the creative high points of the composer’s early period and at the same time marks a step toward the heroic tone of his Third Symphony, the Eroica. Beethoven premiered the concerto in Vienna in April 1803. The memorable concert was an astonishingly long marathon of Beethoven’s compositions, featuring not only the Third Piano Concerto but also his first two symphonies and the oratorio Christ on the Mount of Olives.

Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki began his career as an enthusiastic avant-gardist, an experimenter, and a champion of New Music techniques. However, by the mid-1970s, he had completely transformed his aesthetic, embracing a post-Romantic musical language in the tradition of great symphonists such as Mahler, Bruckner, and Shostakovich. This musical style also shapes Penderecki’s Fourth Symphony “Adagio”, composed in 1989 at the request of the French government to commemorate the two hundredth anniversary of the French Revolution.