Opening Concert

Thomas Guggeis will stand in for Daniel Barenboim

The legendary conductor and pianist Daniel Barenboim will be unable to open this year’s Prague Spring for health reasons. At Barenboim’s behest, the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra will instead be conducted by 28-year-old Thomas Guggeis for the performance of the festival’s signature composition, My Country by Bedřich Smetana.

“Withdrawing from this tour is painful,” said Daniel Barenboim, who had to be hospitalised with vasculitis. “My work with the WEDO is very special to me and I was greatly looking forward to performing Smetana’s Má vlast with them. However, at this time, I must prioritize my health and I am grateful that Thomas Guggeis has agreed to take over the tour. ‘Má vlast’ is a very poignant piece for the WEDO to be taking to European capitals, especially at this time. ‘Má vlast’ means ‘my homeland’ and it is very significant and symbolic that our orchestra, which still does not have a homeland, will be performing this piece in Prague,” noted Barenboim with regard to the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, in which young Israeli and Arab musicians play side by side. The orchestra appears regularly at the major festivals in Salzburg and Lucerne and at London’s BBC Proms. It has also played before Pope Benedict XIV and at the UN headquarters.Thomas Guggeis will be standing in for Barenboim for the course of the whole tour of European metropolises. My Country will be performed in Paris, Milan, Munich, Brussels, and Luxembourg, culminating in the opening concert for the Prague Spring.

“We wish Mr Barenboim a speedy recovery. He will be sorely missed at this year’s Prague Spring. However, we have full confidence in Barenboim’s choice and we share the hopes that he sets on the young Thomas Guggeis. We look forward to his interpretation of My Country with much interest. Incidentally, Jakub Hrůša was also 28 years old when he opened the Prague Spring in 2010,” responded the festival director Roman Bělor.

The conductor Thomas Guggeis, who served as Daniel Barenboim’s assistant for many years, came into the limelight in March 2018, when he took over the reins of the Berlin State Opera’s acclaimed production of Strauss’s Salome after Christoph von Dohnány. Since the 2021/2022 season, he has held the post of “Staatskapellmeister” at the famed venue, and he has conducted a number of operas there – Verdi’s Falstaff, Wagner’s Lohengrin, Mozart’s Don Giovanni, or Janáček’ Jenůfa. He followed this up with a debut at the Vienna State Opera (Strauss’s Salome and Korngold’s The Dead City). The upcoming season of 2022/2023 will see him debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York; he is also slated to serve as music director of the Frankfurt Opera. His symphonic experience includes performances with Orchestre de Paris, Staatskapelle Dresden, or the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra.

A project against ignorance

Today, the best young musicians from Israel and Palestine as well as from Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Spain, and Turkey come together to study musical works and to give the best of themselves under one flag. It is no wonder that in 2016 the United Nations appointed the orchestra as a Global Advocate for Cultural Understanding”. The orchestra’s founder and conductor Daniel Barenboim emphasises, however, that the thought of music bringing peace is a bit idealistic. “The Divan is not a love story, and it is not a peace story. It has very flatteringly been described as a project for peace. It isn’t. It’s not going to bring peace, whether you play well or not so well. The Divan was conceived as a project against ignorance. (…) I’m trying to create a platform where the two sides can disagree and not resort to knives.”

Rafael Kubelík as a model

There is no need for proof that Bedřich Smetana’s cycle of symphonic poems can be understood not only by Czechs, but also by foreign musicians. This can be seen from the number of outstanding performances by orchestras and conductors from around the world. Daniel Barenboim (* 1942) became familiar with Má vlast thanks to the founder of the Prague Spring Festival, the conductor Rafael Kubelík. “His interpretation has, to this day, remained the model for me”, he admits. Not just his words, but also his actions demonstrate him to be one of the great lovers of the work. He has repeatedly conducted Smetana’s cycle not only with the Vienna Philharmonic, but also with the Staatskapelle Berlin and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and he has made a CD recording of it. The performance of the work at the opening concert of the 2017 Prague Spring Festival became a major event and one of the pillars of the festival’s history. In a review for the music journal Harmonie titled “An international Má vlast that will go down in history”, Petr Veber wrote that “Barenboim’s conception was musically authoritative—the seal of a personality that does not seek but knows, that does not hesitate but fully and securely feels. It is the contribution of a conductor who communicates wonderfully and naturally with the players, who leads inconspicuously, and who does not conduct for effect.” On the occasion of the concert, the film director Martin Suchánek made a unique documentary titled Barenboim: Smetana – Má vlast.