Czech Philharmonic ⬩ Giovanni Antonini

Passionate lovers of music, especially opera, play a fun game amongst themselves: to summarize a whole opera in a single sentence. For example, this comedy is easy to recognise: “Two lovers try to overcome the intrigues of their parents and visitors, and a bear escapes from the circus.” Or, on a more serious note: “Parisian hipsters have trouble with their heating and get drunk, then the seamstress dies.” Or, for those “serious” opera fans out there: “A count looks for his supposedly dead brother kidnapped by a gypsy to avenge the burning of her mother at the stake, meanwhile, the count is unwittingly in love with the same woman as his archenemy, who he kills before discovering that they were brothers.”

We might attempt the same thing in the case of the four arias that mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kožená is singing on the first half of the concert. Donna Elvíra reflects on her feelings towards a man who has abandoned her but who she still, for some reason, finds attractive; Ilia, who despairs that she will never see her father and brothers again, has fallen in love with one of her abductors; Berenice has been taken away from her beloved Demetrio and falls into a deadly state of delirium.

In contrast to the violent impulses of these operatic heroines, in the next composition performed, the wildest moment comes in a famous musical depiction of a storm. The fact that this does not take place until the fourth movement does not mean Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 lacks drama of course. At the time of writing, the symphonic form was seen as being dramatic, and Beethoven’s compositions support such a view in terms of their structure, treatment of thematic material, internal cohesion, and tension. In the case of the “Pastoral” Symphony, even its subtitle – “Recollections of Life in the Countryside” – captures this overall impression too.

Italian conductor Giovanni Antonini has devoted his whole life to historically informed interpretations of early music. Audiences can therefore expect a stylistic approach to one of the most frequently played compositions of the classical era. It was thanks to an unsuccessful violin audition that Antonini decided to study the recorder instead and go onto discover the world of Baroque music.  As he himself recalls, he had a great advantage because at the time he did not have many artistic models to rely on and simply imitate, so he had to seek out interpretive approaches of his own. He was obviously very successful, as is shown by his many guest appearances with top orchestras around the world and his regular and warmly welcomed appearances to the Rudolfinum.