The Czech Philharmonic will open the season with Dvořák, accompanied by a violinist from a Tuscan farm

The violinist Augustin Hadelich will perform as a soloist. “Dvořák was a violinist himself, so it’s no wonder that the inner voices in his scores are always extremely important,” he says, describing one of Dvořák’s most famous, the Violin Concerto in A minor from 1883.

“In many parts of it, for example, in the beautiful transition from the first to the second movement, the violin does not hover high above the orchestral texture, but is right in the middle of it – it is the middle voice of the chorale, surrounded by the sounds of horns and brass instruments. This means that the soloist, the conductor and wind players have to breathe and phrase together, constantly listen to and respond to each other,” Hadelich describes, which he believes makes the composition special, but which is also its biggest challenge.

Thirty-nine-year-old Hadelich was born in the Italian city of Cecina to German parents who owned a farm there. “His life is the story of a prodigy from a Tuscan farm who made it to the very top,” states orchestra.

The boy started playing the violin at the age of five under the guidance of his father, an amateur cellist, who was his only teacher for a long time. As a fifteen-year-old boy, he was injured in a fire. He was recuperating in Germany. Already in the new millennium, he graduated from the prestigious New York music school Juilliard and today he holds American citizenship.

In 2006, he won the International Violin Competition in Indianapolis, USA. He has many traditional repertoire pieces to his credit, including Dvořák’s Violin Concerto in A minor, which he recorded on the Bohemian Tales album. With Jakub Hrůša and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, he won the Opus Klassik award for it in 2021 and also earned a Grammy nomination. “The violinist articulates precisely, he can make his instrument smoothly transition from passionate singing to the cadence of human speech. He conveys the music in a traditional way, but with ease,” Aktuálně.cz wrote in the review of the recording.

The concerts he will perform next week with the Czech Philharmonic are also already a prologue to the Year of Czech Music 2024. Throughout the upcoming 128th concert season, the Czech Philharmonic will reflect on the Year of Czech Music and the Smetana 200 project. head of the ensemble for the sixth year, but also guest conductors Jakub Hrůša and Tomáš Netopil. Alongside them, conductors Simon Rattle, Giovanni Antonini and Franz Welser-Möst will return. Antonio Pappano, Tugan Sochijev and Nicholas Kraemer will make their debut.

The resident artist of the season is the pianist András Schiff. With the Czech Philharmonic, violinist Janine Jansen or cellist Pablo Ferrández will perform again, and from Czech artists violinists Josef Špaček and Jiří Vodička or pianist Lukáš Vondráček.

Pianist Steven Osborne, British soprano Louise Alder and baritone Christian Gerhaher will join the orchestra for the first time. The 129th season of the Czech Chamber Music Association, which is a year older than the Czech Philharmonic, will feature violinist Julia Fischer, pianist Mitsuko Uchida and pianist Víkingur Ólafsson will also perform recitals.

A frequent artistic partner of the Czech Philharmonic will be the Prague Philharmonic Choir under the direction of Lukáš Vasilek. The space at the evening concerts will once again be given to the Czech Student Philharmonic.

Already on the anniversary of the birth of Antonín Dvořák, which falls on September 8, the company Pentatone she issued a recording of Symphony No. 1 in D major by Gustav Mahler performed by the Czech Philharmonic. Its publication follows the Second, Fourth and Fifth symphonies, which were published last year and this year. Last season, the orchestra simultaneously recorded the Sixth and Seventh symphonies, and the year before the Ninth, so that only the Third and Eighth symphonies remain to complete the cycle this season.

The opening concerts will be conducted by Semjon Byčkov, chief conductor of the Philharmonic. | Photo: CTK

The first Czech orchestra recorded all of Mahler’s symphonies between 1976 and 1982 under the baton of the then chief conductor Václav Neumann, who was a great promoter of the composer’s symphonic work. The cycle created under the direction of Semjon Byčkov is the first attempt at a new interpretation of Mahler’s symphonies by the orchestra in more than four decades.

In October, the Czech Philharmonic will go to South Korea and Japan with Byčkov for the first time since the covid break, and in the spring they will head to Spain, Belgium, France, Germany and Austria. On both tours, he will represent the Czech Republic with compositions by Antonín Dvořák. “Performing Dvořák’s works at home and abroad is one of the Czech Philharmonic’s contributions to the upcoming Year of Czech Music, which will culminate in an American tour in December of next year,” adds orchestra spokesperson Luděk Březina.

Video: Nobody solves gender in classical music, says the conductor