He was inspired by Josef Sudek and Czech youtubers. The Englishman composed a symphony about Prague
He is not Czech and has never visited the Czech Republic, yet he wrote a work inspired by him. The renowned British composer Julian Anderson called his second symphony the Prague Panoramas and dedicated it to a city he recognized from photographs by Josef Sudek or videos by youtuber Janek Rubeš. It is “an expression of my love for Czech culture,” he says.
The world premiere of two of the three sentences took place in Munich, but it was not possible in Prague due to anti-pandemic measures. The Czech Philharmonic Orchestra will perform the entire Prague Skylines this week Rudolfinum, from Wednesday 20 to Friday 22 April. Julian Anderson will also be present.
He collaborates with the first Czech orchestra for the first time. The Prague Panoramas are among 14 works, nine local and five by foreign authors, which the Philharmonic commissioned after the arrival of chief conductor Semjon Byčkov.
“This is a symphony composed of three extensive sentences that reflect the panoramic format of Sudek’s photographs. The composition is not based on individual photographs, but rather on the overall impression the book made on me,” said the composer. magazine of the Czech Philharmonic. He had in mind the publication Prague Panoramic by photographer Josef Sudek, who captured historical monuments in the center and the outskirts of the city with a wide-angle lens. The first edition of the book dates from 1959.
Anderson, a 55-year-old London native, follows a trend called spectralism and is one of the most important contemporary British composers. He began composing in the 1990s, premiered by Sir Simon Rattle with the Berlin Philharmonic or Vladimir Jurowski with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, while the musical drama Thebané, inspired by the myth of Oedipus, was commissioned by the English National Opera. Anderson also taught at Harvard University or the Royal Academy of Music in London.
Over the obstacles of the Iron Curtain
He was introduced to Czech culture by his parents, descendants of Jewish refugees from Lithuania to Great Britain. The compositions of Bedřich Smetana and Antonín Dvořák have been heard from records, radio or television since childhood, and his father played the chorale of Saint Wenceslas. He especially liked Smetana ‘s My Homeland, especially the narrative sequence of the second sentence about the Vltava River, as described in the text for the Czech Embassy in London.
In the late 1970s, there was also the work of Leoš Janáček, whose operas were gaining in popularity in Great Britain at the time – conductor Sir Charles Mackerras, like the author’s Sinfonietta, and recorded the Glagolitic Mass for Decca.
“This passionately energetic music, full of surprising harmonies, propulsive rhythms and soaring melodic lines, stunned me and has amazed me ever since,” Anderson recalls. He also heard the Fourth Symphony of Bohuslav Martinů or the mourning symphony Asrael by Josef Suk.
“But there were real problems with learning about Czech culture in the 1970s and 1980s. The Prague Spring in 1968 and its tragic end came a year after I was born, and as a child my parents repeatedly told me about their horror as they watched television. a horrible look at the Soviet Warsaw Pact tanks rolling into Prague in August, and regretted how the hopes of Dubcek’s liberalization regime were brutally shattered, ”says Anderson.
Composer Julian Anderson. | Photo: John Batten
He thus perceived Czechoslovakia as a distant land he could hardly see, as a mythical region existing in magical music, whose only sign of existence were imported records published by the Czechoslovak Supraphon. “The whole country was just banned, like most of Eastern Europe at the time. It was the Iron Curtain era, and although it’s hard for people today to believe, we’ve all accepted this strange situation,” says the composer.
He didn’t change it until November 1989. Julian Anderson was stuck to radio and television. The Velvet Revolution, the election of Václav Havel to the Castle and the rediscovery of Alexander Dubček’s politics are among his most vivid memories.
Although as a pacifist he does not like the revolution, the Czechoslovak one touched him. And since she is part of the LGBT, she was later pleased when the Czechia took the “perhaps the most liberal” stance on homosexuality of all Eastern European countries, he wrote.
Czech culture symbolically accompanied Anderson. For example, in 1992, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the extermination of Lidice, he contributed to the planting of an alley that connects the old ruined village with the new one. Touched by the history of the village, the English composer paid for three trees.
How hard it is to get Sudka
In 2005, she discovered Sudek’s book Prague Panoramic at an exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery in London. At that time, he was already a professor of music at Harvard University, and thanks to that he was able to borrow Sudek’s publications from the local library. Otherwise they were not available.
Anderson was fascinated by the photographic images of Prague and its surroundings, lovingly portrayed and carefully proportioned, with a boom and trajectory, as when a symphony sounds, he compares it retrospectively.
Photographer Josef Sudek at the house where he lived in Prague’s Hradčany. Taken in August 1976, a month before his death. | Photo: ČTK
“At the time, I wrote that if I ever had music inspired by panoramic Prague, it would have to be an essential work. The grandeur of the photographs themselves almost suggested orchestral sounds and textures,” describing.
An rare book, last published in 1992, was brought to him from his Prague antiquarian bookshop only the year before last. And so Josef Sudek unexpectedly got back into Anderson’s life. At that time, a friend and chief conductor of the Czech Philharmonic Semyon Byckov suggested that he compose a new symphonic work. “I spent hours staring at each page. The book has seemed softer and more remarkable to me since I last saw it. As I looked at these photos of dreamy precision and mosaic beauty, I imagined sounds, textures, orchestral colors. “So the decision was made for me: the new work will be a symphony inspired by Sudek’s Prague photographs,” explains Anderson.
When the Czech Philharmonic agreed to perform it, the composer’s first visit to Prague began. However, the plans were thwarted by a pandemic, the Czechia and Britain closed the borders, so the Englishman had to finish the symphony without convincing himself of the beauties of the Czech capital.
However, Josef Sudek was not the only inspiration. Anderson was also interested in the videos of Czech youtubers Janek Rubeš and Jan Mikulka, who accompany tourists around the capital in the internet show Honest Guide and draw attention to its tourist pitfalls. In addition, for example, from Charles Bridge with large splitting pliers they removed the so-called locks of love AND ? over 200,000 crowns for the bell in the Church of St. Havel in Prague’s Old Town, where Jan Nepomucký preached in the 14th century.
The old bell was once melted down by the Nazis. The new one was made in Innsbruck, Austria and brought across Charles Bridge to St. Havel.
Janek Rubeš and Jan Mikulka from Charles Bridge used so-called pliers to remove so-called love locks. | Video: An honest guide
Anderson analyzed the sound spectrum of this bell, from which he gained harmonies for part of his symphony. “There is also a real bell among the percussions in the same tuning as Rubeš’s and Mikul’s ‘Honest Guide Bell’. There was a beautiful coincidence when the Prague Skylines also played in January. The bells used by the Munich Philharmonic were made in Innsbruck and really had really a very similar sound, “adds the composer, who, thanks to Rubešov and Mikulek’s video, also got to know the Czech song Travička zelená. He used this in the last movement of the symphony.
In addition, Julian Anderson is a supporter of the cat Mikeš, Pat and Mat or Spejbl and Hurvínek. “All these things turn everyday life in a surreal way,” he says. When he finally arrives in Prague this week, he is going to visit Vyšehrad. “Of course also Charles Bridge and Prague Castle, but if I want to avoid tourists, I will probably have to go there at seven in the morning,” he adds.