An evening of romantic gestures and three major Prague Spring debuts
The Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra appears at the Prague Spring for the very first time, its sound having been shaped by great artistic personalities such as Valery Gergiev (1995–2008) and Yannick Nézet-Séguin (2008–2018). The evening will unfold in a spirit of “blue skies, murmuring brooks, sunshine, love and tenderness”.
The programme brings together the music of two great friends, Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms, and opens with the energetic Cyrano de Bergerac overture by Johan Wagenaar, a Dutch composer whose style recalls the grand Romantic scores of Richard Strauss.
Making his Prague Spring debut on the podium will be the thirty-six-year-old conductor Lahav Shani, who developed artistically under the wing of the legendary Daniel Barenboim. Joining him in writing his first Prague Spring chapter will be one of today’s most outstanding musical talents, the Austrian pianist Lukas Sternath. At just twenty-five, the winner of the ARD International Music Competition in Munich and an ECHO Rising Star 2024, he has, in the past three years, made debuts with the Vienna Philharmonic, at the Salzburg Festival and the BBC Proms, as well as at London’s Wigmore Hall and Leipzig’s Gewandhaus. A pianist who combines remarkable lyricism with youthful temperament and superb technique, he will perform Robert Schumann’s beautiful (and only) Piano Concerto, into which the composer wove the name of his great love, Clara Schumann.
If you are a lover of grand gestures and Romantic scores, reserve the evening of 1 June for the Prague Spring. We will tell you stories filled with tenderness, joy, love – and, above all, happy endings.
