Search

Czech Philharmonic • Giovanni Antonini


For regular concert goers, it’s only natural for past musical experiences to sometimes merge with one another or even be forgotten. This shouldn’t be the case with the following two extraordinary artists who regularly perform with the Czech Philharmonic: Magdalena Kožená, who brings artistic refinement, technical perfection, and vocal colour to everything she does; and Giovanni Antonini who brings thrilling Italian temperament to his authentic interpretations of early music.

Subscription series C

Programme

Josef Mysliveček
L’Olimpiade, overture to the opera “Che non mi disse un dì!”, aria from Act II of the opera L’Olimpiade

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
“Mi tradì quell’alma ingrata”, aria from Act II of the opera Don Giovanni

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Idomeneo, overture to the opera “Padre, germani, addio!”, aria from Act I of the opera Idomeneo

Joseph Haydn
Scena di Berenice, concert aria, Hob XXIVa:10

Ludwig van Beethoven
Symphony No. 6 in F major, Op. 68 “Pastoral”

Performers

Magdalena Kožená soprano

Giovanni Antonini conductor

Czech Philharmonic

Photo illustrating the event Czech Philharmonic • Giovanni Antonini

Rudolfinum — Dvořák Hall

Passionate lovers of music, especially opera, play a fun game amongst themselves: to summarize a whole opera in a single sentence. For example, this comedy is easy to recognise: “Two lovers try to overcome the intrigues of their parents and visitors, and a bear escapes from the circus.” Or, on a more serious note: “Parisian hipsters have trouble with their heating and get drunk, then the seamstress dies.” Or, for those “serious” opera fans out there: “A count looks for his supposedly dead brother kidnapped by a gypsy to avenge the burning of her mother at the stake, meanwhile, the count is unwittingly in love with the same woman as his archenemy, who he kills before discovering that they were brothers.”

We might attempt the same thing in the case of the four arias that mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kožená is singing on the first half of the concert. Donna Elvíra reflects on her feelings towards a man who has abandoned her but who she still, for some reason, finds attractive; Ilia, who despairs that she will never see her father and brothers again, has fallen in love with one of her abductors; Berenice has been taken away from her beloved Demetrio and falls into a deadly state of delirium.

In contrast to the violent impulses of these operatic heroines, in the next composition performed, the wildest moment comes in a famous musical depiction of a storm. The fact that this does not take place until the fourth movement does not mean Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 lacks drama of course. At the time of writing, the symphonic form was seen as being dramatic, and Beethoven’s compositions support such a view in terms of their structure, treatment of thematic material, internal cohesion, and tension. In the case of the “Pastoral” Symphony, even its subtitle – “Recollections of Life in the Countryside” – captures this overall impression too.

Italian conductor Giovanni Antonini has devoted his whole life to historically informed interpretations of early music. Audiences can therefore expect a stylistic approach to one of the most frequently played compositions of the classical era. It was thanks to an unsuccessful violin audition that Antonini decided to study the recorder instead and go onto discover the world of Baroque music.  As he himself recalls, he had a great advantage because at the time he did not have many artistic models to rely on and simply imitate, so he had to seek out interpretive approaches of his own. He was obviously very successful, as is shown by his many guest appearances with top orchestras around the world and his regular and warmly welcomed appearances to the Rudolfinum.

Performers

Magdalena Kožená  soprano

Magdalena Kožená, Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, is one of the most successful Czech singers of today. Although she now lives in Berlin, she often comes back to the Czech Republic to join the Czech Philharmonic, either together with her husband Simon Rattle or for a concert on her own, this time conducted by Giovanni Antonini. She has collaborated with this conductor for a long time, appearing, inter alia, in the Classical repertoire. In 2006 she went on tour with Antonini’s ensemble Il Giardino Armonico; in 2019 her performance in the program with Mozart and Gluck arias with Antonini and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment was a great success.

Kožená was born in Brno, where she attended the Brno Philharmonic Children’s Choir Kantiléna which (according to her own words) shaped her not only as a musician but also as a human being, and she also began piano lessons. After graduating from the Brno Conservatory and the Bratislava Academy of Performing Arts, she began to collaborate with local ensembles specializing in early music. The impulse to cross over the border of Baroque music, which also opened the door for her to the international music world, came in 1995 when she won the prestigious W. A. Mozart International Competition in Salzburg. Another milestone was her exclusive recording contract with Deutsche Grammophon, which presented a crucial opportunity for Kožená to get acquainted with the leading musical figures. Since then, she has released a number of recordings of various repertoire (including Czech music), for which she has been awarded major prizes (Gramophone Award, Echo Klassik, Diapason d’Or, etc.).

Kožená has given recitals in the world’s most prestigious concert halls, such as Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, Concergebouw Amsterdam, etc., has worked with Claudio Abbado, Pierre Boulez, Nikolaus Harnoncourt and other renowned conductors, and has also devoted herself to opera (regular guest appearances at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, Berlin’s Staatsoper, etc.). On top of that, she has also performed in the sphere of “non-artificial” (natural) music such as swing and flamenco. Also impressive is the breadth of her classical repertoire, which ranges from Baroque music and collaboration with early music ensembles, the Classical and Romantic repertoire, for which she has become known, inter alia, as a promoter of Czech music, to contemporary music. However, she does not forget about living in the non-musical world either, because, as she says, “I sing stories about what happens in life, and if I didn’t experience any of that – motherhood, for example – I would feel that I had nothing to convey to the audience.”

Giovanni Antonini  conductor, recorder

Giovanni Antonini

A native of Milan, Giovanni Antonini has long been acclaimed worldwide for his innovative and polished approach to performing the Baroque and Classical repertoire while fully respecting the precepts of historically informed interpretation. However, the path of early music had not been his first choice of study. He had originally applied to the conservatoire as a violinist, and it was only because he did not succeed at his audition that he ultimately began studying the recorder, and he became a master of the instrument. It was thanks to his study of the flute at the Civica Scuola di Musica that Antonini fully discovered the world of Baroque music. In addition, as he himself recalls, it was a great advantage that as a flautist specialising in historical interpretation, he did not have many artistic models to rely on and simply imitate (after all, in the 1980s the field was still in its infancy), so he had to seek out his own interpretive approaches. He found further support in his studies at the Centre de Musique Ancienne in Geneva, but the urge never abandoned him to penetrate truly deeply into the music and to create his own language, which is now so appreciated for its uniqueness.

In 1985 he founded his own Baroque ensemble Il Giardino Armonico, with which he still appears all around the world in the dual role of soloist (whether on the recorder or the Baroque transverse flute) and conductor. Overall, perhaps the most ambitious project he threw himself into a few years back with the Basel Chamber Orchestra was to record the complete symphonies of Haydn, and to finish by the year 2032, the 300th anniversary of the composer’s birth. The project Haydn2032, of which Antonini is the artistic director, is daring not only for its scope (Haydn wrote 107 Symphonies, so it is necessary to release 2 CDs with three or four symphonies every year!), but also because of the interpretive difficulties of Haydn’s music. “Haydn is very difficult to perform well because many of the interpretive paths can sound boring. But Haydn is not boring, it’s just the matter of finding the key to the correct interpretation,” explains Antonini. So far, 14 CDs have appeared (most recently this September), so the Haydn symphonic repertoire he has already recorded, rehearsed, or prepared has also influenced the programming of Antonini’s concerts in recent years.

We will also be hearing Haydn at today’s concert, which is, among other things, a continuation of cooperation from this past February, when he performed the music of Telemann and Mozart with the Czech Philharmonic and the Czech Philharmonic Youth Orchestra. Of course, Antonini does not overlook other greats masters of the 16th through the 18th centuries, whose works he has recorded with Il Giardino Armonico (including the Vivaldi concerto on today’s programme) or performed in concert with such major orchestras as the Berlin Philharmonic, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw Orchestra, and the London Symphony Orchestra and with renowned soloists like Cecilia Bartoli, Giuliano Carmignola, Isabelle Faust, and Katia and Marielle Labèque. He also devotes himself to opera; in recent years, for example, we have been able to see him at Milan’s La Scala (Giulio Cesare), the Zurich Opera House (Idomeneo), and the Theater an der Wien (Rappresentatione di Anima, et di Corpo). He is also the artistic director of the Polish music festival Wratislavia Cantans and the principal guest conductor of the Basel Chamber Orchestra.

Compositions

Josef Mysliveček
L’Olimpiade, overture to the opera “Che non mi disse un dì!”, aria from Act II of the opera L’Olimpiade

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
“Mi tradì quell’alma ingrata”, aria from Act II of the opera Don Giovanni & Idomeneo, overture to the opera “Padre, germani, addio!”, aria from Act I of the opera Idomeneo

Joseph Haydn
Scena di Berenice, concert aria, Hob XXIVa:10

Ludwig van Beethoven
Symphony No. 6 in F Major, Op. 68 (“Pastoral”)

Příroda znamenala pro Ludwiga van Beethovena (1770–1827) útočiště a při dlouhých procházkách v okolí Vídně také nalézal inspiraci. „Ptáte se mne, odkud beru své myšlenky? To nejsem schopen s jistotou říci; přicházejí nevolány, nepřímo, bezprostředně, mohl bych je uchopit rukama v přírodě, v lese, na procházkách, v tichu noci, za časného rána, podníceny náladami,“ jak údajně prohlásil. Ve svém svérázném panteisticky orientovaném duchovním smýšlení vnímal přírodu jako odraz Boží činnosti a její prožívání jako prostor pro pociťování sounáležitosti s Bohem. Ne náhodou proto zamýšlel vyjádřit svůj obdivný vztah k přírodě v hudebním díle a navázat tak na tradici hudebních děl 17. a 18. století s přírodní tematikou.

Jeho Symfonie č. 6 F dur op. 68, „Pastorální“ v sobě integruje jak tradici instrumentálních děl přinášejících idylickou atmosféru života pastýřů, tj. pastorále, tak využívání ustálených rétorických figur evokujících určité přírodní děje. Bouře, která je zde užita, byla v hudbě 18. století častým a velmi charakteristickým elementem. Beethoven však svým dílem překračuje starší estetiku usilující o přímé napodobení přírody, snaží se o zachycení emocí, které příroda vzbuzuje. Na zadní stranu titulního listu prvních houslí zaznamenal příznačný podtitul symfonie: „Vzpomínka na venkovský život (spíše výraz pocitů nežli malba).“ Beethoven svou Šestou symfonii komponoval v letech 1807–1808 souběžně s Pátou. Obě symfonie byly společně premiérovány 22. prosince 1808 v Divadle na Vídeňce.

Pastorální symfonie je netradičně pětivětá, před finále je totiž vložena zmiňovaná Bouře. První, sonátová věta nese od Beethovena podtitul Probuzení radostných pocitů při příchodu na venkov. Její pozitivní ladění spojené s venkovským prostředím je podpořeno hudebními prvky evokujícími hru vesnických muzikantů – časté harmonie na základních funkcích, opakování krátkých hudebních motivů, houpavá melodika. Pomalá věta je idylickou žánrovou Scénou u potoka, založenou na charakteristickém triolovém motivu proudění vody, k němuž se připojuje zpěv ptáků. Slavík (flétna), křepelka (hoboj) a kukačka (klarinet) větu dokonce uzavřou sólistickými kadencemi. Scherzo, nazvané Veselé setkání venkovanů, je temperamentním selským kolovým tancem, který nečekaně přejde v působivou Bouři. Když se běsnící živel uklidní, do jeho posledních dozvuků zaznívá zbožně znějící chorálová melodie, k níž si Beethoven do jedné ze skic připsal slova „Pane, děkujeme ti,“ a která je přechodem k finále s podtitulem Šťastné a vděčné pocity po bouři. Jeho poklidná a jasná atmosféra nás navrací do nálady úvodní věty a symetricky uzavírá celé dílo.