Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester

! The subscribers of PSO gain discount of 50% on this concert after presenting valid subscribers ticket  for this concert.

Concert is held under the auspices of H. E. Ferdinand Trauttmansdorff, Ambassador of the Republic of Austria in the Czech Republic and mayor of the capital city of Prague Bohuslav Svoboda.

 

 

In cooperation with Austrian cultural forum  Prague.

 

                       Partner of the concert

 

This concert is part of  Prague Easter Festival 2012

 

The writing of the opera Tristan and Isolde by RICHARD WAGNER (1813–1883) was instigated by two events: firstly by the commission from the Brazilian Emperor Pedro II who wanted to perform "something by Wagner” in Rio de Janeiro, and also by the passionate love felt by the forty-year old composer for the twenty-three year old Mathilde Wesendonck. After the scandal caused by Wagner's love letter to Mathilde, the composer went to Venice where he finished Tristan and Isolde. A concentrated form of the opera can be found in the Overture. It opens with two motifs that move in opposite directions: a theme of suffering and a theme of longing; from the two, the motif of the dying Tristan later evolves. Other key motifs are love, the renouncement of love, and the defiance of death. These themes then undergo numerous transformations, with Isolde's 'love and death' theme forming a symphonic coda of the whole structure. The established title of the last scene from the opera, "Liebestod", was not given by Wagner - it was Franz Liszt who gave this title to his piano paraphrase of the scene in 1867. In Prague the Tristan and Isolde Overture was performed for the first time at the Žofín Palace, on the 8^th of February 1863, conducted by the composer himself. The Overture, together with an instrumental version of the Liebestod were played for the first time together on the occasion of the composer’s visit to St Petersburg on the 26^th of February 1863.
Six Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 6,by ANTON WEBERN (1883–1945) were composed in 1909, at a time when the composer was struggling to make a living. They were written by Webern for large orchestra, although the orchestra does not play as a whole ensemble in any part of the composition; for example the fourth movement (originally called Marcia Funebre) is orchestrated only for wind and percussion instruments. The composition was premiered in the hall of the Musikverein in Vienna on the 31^st March 1913, together with other works by composers from the Arnold Schönberg circle, under Schönberg’s baton. The event caused a scandal. The Six Pieces by Webern were the first item on the programme, and the following day the newspapers wrote: 'When there was no harmony at all to be heard after a number of bars, and after a steady flow of out of tune sounds and instrumental madness, a certain part of the audience was overcome by audible laughter.' Nowadays, Webern's Six Pieces Op. 6, are among his most often performed compositions.
The creative work of BERND ALOIS ZIMMERMANN (1918–1970), a leading figure among German avant-garde composers, was instigated during the courses of New Music held in Kranichstein, Darmstadt. Among characteristic traits of his musical language are the use of quotes and the technique of collage. Zimmerman garnered much critical acclaim in the 1960s and was the recipient of several awards. However, with his deteriorating health and threatened by a loss of vision, he suffered a major breakdown and committed suicide. The composition Photoptosis (incidence of light in Greek) was written in 1968. "It deals with transformations of areas of colour in the incidence of light, here presented as sounds", is how the composer described the work. The composition is structured in three parts: the first piles up the colours of sounds (flutes, harp, kettle-drums, and violins) in a growing crescendo. The middle part is a collage where broad planes are penetrated by quotes from historical works – the Scherzo theme from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, the Gregorian Hymn Veni creator spiritus, a quote from Skrjabin’s The Poem of Ecstasy, Wagner’s Parsifal, Bach’s First Brandenburg Concerto and Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker and also from his own piece Intercomunicazione. The final part is again formed as a mounting crescendo, interrupted suddenly at its peak.
ALEXANDER SKRJABIN (1872–1915) attempted in his symphonic works to deal with the issue of the traditional cyclic form in connection with the philosophical and metaphysical role of music, and was also interested in the effect of orchestral colours and the search for balance between homophonic and polyphonic compositional techniques.  Skrjabin’s literary Poème de l’extase (The Poem of Ecstasy) written in 1906 contains verses which are a celebration of the 'spirit'. The poem, originally intended as an attachment to the Symphony (to accompany, but not to be recited with the music) is an expression of  Theosophical thoughts, a philosophy of which Skrjabin was a follower. The musical composition of the same title, originally planned as the fourth symphony, was partly inspired by the Socialist ideas of Grigorij Plechanov, but the composer soon realised that his concept of the ideal society had nothing to do with the Russian Revolutionary Movement.  The music was written in the between 1905-1908. The world premiere took place in New York on December 10^th 1908, whilst the European first night was held in St Petersburg on the 1^st February 1909.