Czech Philharmonic ⬩ Jakub Hrůša

Last season, Principal Guest Conductor Jakub Hrůša worked with the Czech Philharmonic Youth Orchestra for the first time and went away not only speaking highly of the players artistic performance but also of the humanity they brought to their music making. In a letter addressed to the Youth Orchestra, he said:

“You played with precision and power, prudence and passion, your heads and your hearts, a clear plan and spontaneity. But the main thing is the human quality I sensed from it. Above and beyond all of that, you are simply great people. I think the most important thing I am now feeling is gratitude that I can return next year as your conductor. I am already looking forward to it.”

For their second series of concerts together, Hrůša has chosen the programmatic suite Scheherazade (1888), Rimsky-Korsakov’s most frequently performed orchestral work which was inspired by the medieval collection of Arabian tales, One Thousand and One Nights. Rather than forming a musical setting for one detailed story, Rimsky-Korsakov’s colourfully orchestrated music depicts instead characters, settings, and scenes from the different individual tales. Listeners will visit a Baghdad marketplace, feel the ardent love of a young prince, and witness a shipwreck on stormy seas.

Epilogue is the final work of Suk’s symphonic tetralogy which the Czech Philharmonic is recording with Jakub Hrůša. Suk began writing sketches for Epilogue in 1920 and made his final revisions in 1933. This extensive composition with a prominent vocal part is one of those great artworks with an intellectual framework which can be described in no other way than as religious and philosophical. The composer himself described the idea behind the work in such a way: “The work goes through the whole of human life, into reflection on death and the dread of it, before the appearance of the song of earthly love, all this leading up to the exhilarating song of liberated mankind. Is death not that for which we are striving, for which humanity shall be striving from eternity to eternity? Without death, life could not be made new and eternal, therefore we have the words of the Holy Scriptures: ‘O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?’”