Igor Stravinsky
Chant funèbre

Sergei Rachmaninov
Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18

Igor Stravinsky
Les Noces (The Wedding)

Lukáš Vondráček – piano
Veronika Rovná – soprano
Ksenia Chubunova – mezzo-soprano
Martin Logar – tenor
Matija Bizjan – bass
Czech Philharmonic Choir Brno
Petr Fiala – choirmaster
Janáček Philharmonic Ostrava
Andrey Boreyko – conductor

The concert is part of the St. Wenceslas Music Festival.

During the renovation of the St. Petersburg Conservatory building in 2015, a forgotten stack of scores was accidentally discovered, revealing an extraordinary surprise. Among them was the score of Igor Stravinsky’s early orchestral work Chant funèbre, composed in 1908 after the death of his teacher Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. The piece, considered lost for nearly a century, was thus able to return to concert stages as a moving, richly colored, and Romantic tribute.

Sergei Rachmaninov, later one of the most celebrated piano virtuosos of the 20th century, experienced a difficult period at the beginning of his career. The disastrous failure of his First Symphony in 1897 led to several years of creative and personal crisis. His Second Piano Concerto (1900–1901) restored his confidence—a work filled with sweeping melodies and virtuosity that remains one of the most beloved piano concertos to this day.

Stravinsky’s Les Noces will be performed in the rarely heard version for soloists, chorus, and orchestra, which the composer later abandoned. It was written between 1913 and 1917, parallel to The Rite of Spring. Here too, Stravinsky turns to a raw, rhythmically uncompromising musical language. He drew inspiration from Russian folk wedding rituals and texts, shaping them into a sequence of dance scenes with music and voices. The work does not portray a wedding as an idyllic celebration, but as a ritual governed by tradition and collective order.