PRESS RELEASE 12. 4. 2024
2024 isn’t just the Year of Czech Music and the two hundredth anniversary of Bedřich Smetana’s birth, but also a year in which Dennis Russell Davies, Filharmonie Brno’s Chief Conductor will be celebrating a significant birthday. Two days after his eightieth birthday, which falls on 16 April, Davies and his partner in both his art and his life, Maki Namekawa, will be performing together – as a piano duo – at Besední dům in a tribute to the father of Czech national music. They will be playing Má vlast in Smetana’s arrangement for piano four hands.
“Maki and I know Má vlast from at least three different perspectives. First of all, of course, as Smetana’s wonderful cycle of symphonic poems which I used to open the new season in autumn 2021. I also associate it with last summer, when Maki and I travelled to all the places which feature in Smetana’s work: we began at Kvilda at the source of the Vltava and continued along the river through Lipno and Krumlov to Tábor. We also visited Blaník, and of course Vyšehrad in Prague, the location of Bedřich Smetana’s grave and also the place from where Šárka ruled. And the third perspective, then, is the Má vlast for twenty fingers that we’re experiencing now for the upcoming concert,” says Davies.
The two were accompanied on their journey by director of Austria’s renowned Ars Electronica Festival, Cori O’Lan. His visualisations inspired by experiences of their summer trip will be accompanying the concert: you can view a sample here.
As soon as he had completed Má vlast, Smetana made transcriptions of all six pieces of the cycle for piano four hands. “As a skilled pianist, he was able to turn the orchestral scores into a viable parallel to the symphony version which far surpasses the parameters of a conventional piano score. This virtuoso arrangement has everything needed to prove its worth on the concert stage and leave the audience with a rewarding experience,” says Filharmonie Brno Programme Director, Vítězslav Mikeš.
The concert, which is to take place on Thursday 18 April, was sold out a few days after sales opened, and there are no spaces for the additional concert the following day either. There are a few final standing tickets only available.
Media contact Kateřina Konečná, Head of PR and Marketing, Filharmonie Brno
+420 775 426 040 katerina.konecna@filharmonie-brno.cz