EPILOGUES

SERGEI RACHMANINOFF Symphonic Dances

GUSTAV MAHLER Adagietto from Symphony No. 5

ALFRED SCHNITTKE Epilogue from Peer Gynt

Filharmonie Brno

conductor Tomáš Netopil

Sergei Rachmaninoff entered the music history books not just as composer of piano pieces but also as a symphonist, having written three numbered symphonies, the vocal symphony The Bells, the symphonic poems The Isle of the Dead and The Rock and the Symphonic Dances, an edifice weighty enough to be considered much closer to the symphony than the genre suggested by its title. It was Rachmaninoff’s last great work, written in 1940 in American exile three years before the composer’s death.

The combination of music by Gustav Mahler (1860–1911) and Alfred Schnittke (1934–1998) in the second half of the concert is not accidental. “The symphony as Mahler understands it must maintain its autonomy,” wrote Kurt Blaukopf in his monograph, Gustav Mahler: The Contemporary of the Future, published in Czech in 1998. “It can, however, encompass everything that can be acquired through the techniques of working with sound. The sonata form of Viennese Classicism and Bach’s polyphony, the technique of orchestra blending and Wagner’s tempo modifications.” Schnittke also achieved such a synthesis. His distinctive, post-modern “polystylism” is reflected in the music for the ballet Peer Gynt, created by the choreographer John Neumeier after the Ibsen drama. The Epilogue, an “endless adagio” built as a passacaglia, whose ostinato theme is a choral piece (from a recording) and which summarises the musical and philosophical ideas of the ballet, is strong enough to stand on its own.