METAMORPHOSES

Otomar Kvěch said about his Hrubín Metamorphoses: “After the performance of my Piano Quintet at the Czech Chamber Music Society, associated with the Czech Philharmonic, I was invited to prepare another work of mine for performance at the society. My old desire to write a superlyrical piece had declared itself again. Of course, the original idea had changed: I was no longer a pubescent boy, but nearly fifty. The illness of my wife presented the greatest complication of my life while working on the new composition. It was difficult to seek in my soul that teenage boy enchanted by the world and the life ahead of him. I threw myself into it anyway. Only after completing the sextet did I look up in Hrubín’s oeuvre the quotations that describe the work’s extra-musical content.”

Claude Debussy (1862–1918) wrote a couple of charming dances for harp accompanied by strings in 1904, on commission from the Pleyel Company which was developing a cross-strung chromatic harp for introduction to the music market. Celebrated for his sophisticated demands on the harp, Debussy was asked to write a test piece that would demonstrate the strengths – especially the modulatory capabilities – of the new instrument.

FRANTIŠEK ANTONÍN RÖSSLER-ROSETTI Sonata for Harp in B-flat major

OTOMAR KVĚCH Hrubínovské proměny (Hrubín Metamorphoses)

CLAUDE DEBUSSY Danse sacrée et danse profane

BOHUSLAV MARTINŮ String Quartet No. 7

Jaroslava Čiháková Tajanovská oboe

Ivana Švestková harp

Wallinger Quartet

Concert program can be downloaded here.