Driven by Desire and Fantasy
On Monday 20 March the French pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet will be the guest of the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra and its principal conductor Ondrej Lenárd.
In a recent review the Financial Times said of the internationally renowned artist: “He makes you listen to music as if you are discovering it Eureka!-style: yes, that’s what the composer must have meant.”
Bavouzet is set to perform a distinctive work, Maurice Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand. It was written for the Austrian pianist Paul Wittgenstein (brother of the famous philosopher), who had lost his right hand in World War One.
Incidentally, Wittgenstein was an idiosyncratic musician who in the end refused to play a number of pieces written for him, saying he didn’t understand them. The cooperation between Wittgenstein and Ravel was not idyllic either. The pianist made changes to the solo part that the composer disagreed with, sparking a rupture and a life-long grudge on Ravel’s part.
At the start of the evening, subtitled Driven by Desire and Fantasy, we will recall one of the most eminent Czech composers of the second half of the 20th century, Svatopluk Havelka. Many associate him with his wonderful film music (The Cassandra Cat, All My Countrymen and The Ear). However, the audience at the Rudolfinum and listeners to the live broadcast can look forward to his 1970s symphonic fantasy Hommage à Hieronymus Bosch, which capture the composer’s feelings at that difficult time.
The evening will close with Tchaikovsky and his programmatic Manfred Symphony, based on a poem by Lord Byron. The title character, a typical product of Romanticism, bears many Faustian characteristics. He is a lonely, rebellious spirt, who stands in opposition to the terrestrial world and astrological forces.
Lacking either calmness or certainty, he is also torn internally and aimlessly wanders about the mountains. He searches for a cure in various ways and finds himself among Swiss mountains and in an underground kingdom where a wild bacchanalia takes place. All of these romantic elements are combined in the piece’s central idea: one must try to achieve higher goals and on that path the search is more important than actual discovery.
We invite you to reflect on music and life at the Dvořák Hall of the Rudolfinum itself or via a live broadcast on the station Czech Radio Vltava.
