Who will be Unveiled by this Year’s Prague Spring Debut?
The profoundly gifted (and highly likable!) 25-year-old conductor Jan Sedláček will be the hero of the closely watched Prague Spring Debut to be held in the Smetana Hall of the Municipal House on May 28. For the first time, the winner of last year’s Prague Spring competition, Japanese violinist Tsukushi Sasaki, will also perform at the festival. How many times have we experienced that amazing moment at the festival when a star was born? Join us to see the next great story starting!
The program’s highlight is the Antonín Dvořák’s Symphony No. 3, a piece that was somewhat overshadowed by subsequent symphonic opuses of the composer but very dear to his heart. “He kept returning to this symphony. It is said that even a few days before his death, he flipped through the score with interest,” says Jan Sedláček. Johannes Brahms, delighted with the beautiful melodies, wrote about the work: “It is pure love, and it does one’s heart good!” which can be taken as the best recommendation.
The first half of the night will be to the rhythm of samba, mazurka, blues or the 7-beat Viennese waltz in Leonard Bernstein‘s Divertimento, one of Jan’s favourite composers. As a child, he often heard his West Side Story “in the car played on a tape recorder”, claiming with a hyperbole that: “If music became flesh, it would be called Leonard Bernstein!” Divertimento was written in 1980 to mark the centenary of the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO), so if you have an inquisitive ear, you can amuse yourself to detect the musical acronym of the “Boston Centennial” while listening to it.
Almost sixty years ago, in 1923, Bernstein’s mentor and long-time chief conductor of BSO, Serge Koussevitzky, premiered the second composition of the night: Violin Concerto No. 1 by Sergei Prokofiev. At that time, the audience of the Paris Opera included Pablo Picasso, Karol Szymanowski, Arthur Rubinstein, Nadia Boulanger or a big fan of this exquisite opus, violinist Joseph Szigeti, who also made the work famous by performing it in Prague in 1924 as part of the festival of the International Society for Contemporary Music.
About the beautiful composition where the violin reminds of the sound of a mandolin, the energetic second movement evokes the riveting rhythmic passages of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring and the lyrical, typically Prokofiev’s theme of the final part brings tears to the eyes, the soloist of the evening Tsukushi Sasaki says: “I was attracted by its beautiful, almost dreamlike worldview, and I always wanted to perform it with an orchestra someday.” Tsukushi Sasaki together with Jan Sedláček and the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra will fulfil their wish on May 28 in the Smetana Hall and all those who support youth and who have a predilection for a “mélange” of various musical styles should not miss it. It will be a starry night full of miracles!
Will Jan Sedláček conduct the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra on May 28 in the same way as Leonard Bernstein did? Who knows?! 😊
