The concert opens with Janáček’s opera The Cunning Little Vixen, a work that still radiates fresh energy and celebrates the cyclical beauty of life. It will be followed by Sibelius’s Violin Concerto, performed by Jennifer Pike — a piece that combines virtuosity with unpretentious symphonic depth.

Leoš Janáček
Overture and Pantomime from the opera The Cunning Little Vixen

Jean Sibelius
Violin Concerto

Jennifer Pike – violin
Janáček Philharmonic Ostrava
Daniel Raiskin – conductor

More than a century has passed since the premiere of Leoš Janáček’s opera The Cunning Little Vixen. Yet Janáček’s music remains strikingly fresh and full of life. The story, based on the novella by Rudolf Těsnohlídek, blends the world of animals and humans to celebrate the beauty of the natural, ever-renewing cycle of life — a life that, much like Janáček’s music, is rich with joy, love, humor, wisdom, but also wildness, anger, and sorrow.

British violinist Jennifer Pike, one of the leading artists of her generation, will perform Jean Sibelius’s Violin Concerto. At twenty-five, Sibelius gave up his dream of becoming a violin virtuoso, but the countless hours he had spent practicing found perfect expression in this concerto, composed between 1902 and 1904.

It is a fascinating detail that one of the first performers of Sibelius’s concerto was the Czech violinist Karel Halíř, who gave the premiere of the revised version in Berlin in 1905, conducted by Richard Strauss. The work combines dazzling virtuosity with the purity and nobility of a true symphonist’s vision. It was already a success at its premiere, and to this day it remains one of the most beloved violin concertos in the world.