CHANGE OF PROGRAMME

An exceptional season finale featuring Magdalena Kožená in the leading role. Janáček’s dramatic Jealousy, Berg’s captivating lyricism, and Mahler’s radiant Symphony No. 4 will create an evening full of emotion, colour, and powerful musical stories. A concert that brings the season to a close in grand style.

PROGRAMME

Leoš Janáček (arr. D. Matoušek)
The Diary of One Who Disappeared

Leoš Janáček
Jealousy, original overture to the opera Jenůfa

Alban Berg
Seven Early Songs

/interval/

Karol Szymanowski
Symphony No. 1 in F minor, Op. 15

Gustav Mahler
Symphony No. 4 in G major

PERFORMERS

Magdalena Kožená – mezzo-soprano
Daniel Matoušek – tenor
Janáček Philharmonic Ostrava
Daniel Raiskin – Chief Conductor of the JFO

The closing concert of the season is part of the Leoš Janáček International Music Festival.

Leoš Janáček’s Jealousy was originally composed as an overture to the opera Jenůfa. The composer ultimately removed it from the opera, and the piece went on to take on an independent life in the concert hall. Even in this short orchestral work, Janáček’s remarkable ability to capture dramatic tension, intense emotion, and vivid orchestral colour is fully apparent.

Austrian composer Alban Berg’s Seven Early Songs were written between 1905 and 1908 during his studies with Arnold Schönberg. Although they stand on the threshold of Berg’s later radical turn towards atonality and twelve-tone composition, they are still rooted in the German late-Romantic song tradition. The love poetry of German writers, combined with Berg’s music, creates an evocative atmosphere of the turn of the 20th century.

After the interval, Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 in G major will be performed. One of the composer’s most intimate and lyrical symphonies, it was written around the turn of the 20th century and, with its apparent lightness, stands in contrast to the monumentality of Mahler’s other symphonic works. In the final movement, a solo soprano enters the scene and, in the song Das himmlische Leben, evokes a child’s vision of heavenly life.