Czech Philharmonic ⬩ Josef Špaček

This programme is framed by two of the major works in the history of music. Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony is the composer’s last and longest symphony. Among musicians it is so beloved that conductors voted it the third most popular of all symphonies. The Jupiter Symphony is the last of three great symphonies that Mozart composed in rapid succession in June and July 1788. The speed with which he composed the works and their formal interconnections led Nikolaus Harnoncourt to believe that Mozart had conceived them as a single whole. This hypothesis is supported by, among other things, the facts that the first movement of the Jupiter Symphony lacks the usual slow introduction and that its finale is unusually lengthy.

Dmitri Shostakovich’s First Violin Concerto fell victim to Zhdanov’s censorship, so the composer withheld it, and it was not premiered until seven years later. Meanwhile Shostakovich to continue working on the concerto with David Oistrakh, its dedicatee. The premiere with the Leningrad Philharmonic and Yevgeny Mravinsky was a definite success. The concerto contains references to Beethoven and Elgar along with the plentiful use of a motif based on Shostakovich’s name: DSCH (the German note names for d, e flat, c, and b natural). Another of the premieres of works written on commission for the Czech Philharmonic will feature the music of Jiří Teml, a popular and remarkably versatile composer and a Prague Spring laureate. His compositional style reflects the influence of Czech folk music.