DVOŘÁK AND ADAMS / MK

The chief conductor’s inaugural concert

 

ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK

Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 3 “The Bells of Zlonice”

JOHN ADAMS

Harmonielehre, Czech premiere

 

Brno Philharmonic

conductor Dennis Russell Davies

• The first concert by the world famous musician Dennis Russell Davies in the role of chief conductor of the Brno Philharmonic, foreshadowing the two main threads in the programming of his first season in Brno: key works of twentieth-century American music and rarely performed works by Czech composers • Dvořák’s first symphony, subtitled after the place where Dvořák stayed in his early youth, and premiered only 32 years after Dvořák’s death, on 4 October 1936 by the orchestra of the Provincial Theatre in Brno under the baton of Milan Sachs • Harmonielehre, John Adams’s (born 1947) fascinating work written in 1985, combining the musical languages of late Romanticism and minimalism and proclaiming the composer’s ambivalent relationship – a respect for, as well as a rejection of – Schoenberg’s understanding of music (as expressed by Adams’s adoption of the title of the famous book by the pioneering figure of the Second Viennese School)