The final concert of Dvořák’s Prague marked the highlight of this year’s edition. The festival was closed by the Radio Symphony Orchestra from Sweden
The Dvořák Prague Festival is not only a celebration of the musical genius and world-renowned Czech composer Antonín Dvořák, but also often a social event. The final evening of this year’s 15th annual Dvořák Prague International Music Festival, at which the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra performed with its longtime chief conductor Daniel Harding, was called by reviewers the artistic highlight of the entire festival.
The Dvořák Prague Festival is not only a celebration of the musical genius and world-renowned Czech composer Antonín Dvořák, but also often a social event. It is a parade of top soloists, conductors, internationally recognized orchestras and chamber ensembles. The final evening of this year’s 15th annual Dvořák Prague International Music Festival, at which the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra performed with its longtime chief conductor Daniel Harding, was called by reviewers the artistic highlight of the entire festival.
At the beginning of the concert, Dvořák’s symphonic poem Polednice was performed based on the poem of the same name from the collection Kytice by Karel Jaromír Erben. This inspired Dvořák after his return from his stay in America to compose four symphonic ballads, which in concise proportions describe dramatic stories with extraordinary urgency as an adjacent sound color.
The soloist of the evening was the young German violinist Veronika Eberle, who is among the world’s interpretation elite in her field. For her performance in Prague, she chose Béla Bartók’s Violin Concerto No. 1. The composer completed the concerto in 1908 and dedicated it violinist Stefi Geyerová, with whom he was bound by an unfulfilled personal relationship. The composition was published and performed only at the end of the fifties thanks to the Swiss conductor Paul Sacher, a friend and supporter of our Bohuslav Martinů.
It was the final number of the program and the end of this year’s festival Symphony No. 7 in D minor Antonín Dvořák, which is once again one of Dvořák’s most successful compositions. It differs from previous symphonies in its more serious and sometimes dramatically excited character as well as the strict logic of the structure. Dvořák finished 7th symphony March 17, 1885, and already on April 22 of the same year, he conducted its premiere in London’s St. James Hall. The performance was extremely successful and received by the London audience with spontaneous enthusiasm.