Filharmonie Brno continues to celebrate 70 years since its founding with the sea fantasy ‘The Storm’ by Vítězslav Novák. The colossal work is performed very rarely due to its complexity and the extraordinary demands on the cast: 87 musicians in the orchestra, 70 choristers, six soloists and conductor Robert Kružík will appear on stage.
“We included The Storm in the celebration program because we played it exactly 70 years ago, when the Brno State Philharmonic Orchestra was young, only five months old,” said Marie Kučerová, director of Filharmonie Brno. “It was performed on 14 May 1956 at the Prague Spring under the baton of our first chief conductor Břetislav Bakala.”
Novák wrote ‘The Storm’ based on the poem of the same name by Svatopluk Čech, commissioned by the Brno Beseda for its 50th anniversary celebrations. He was completely absorbed in the composition.
“On the rocky Swedish coast, where he experienced a sea storm firsthand, he was fascinated by the sound of the waves crashing and crashing against the high coastal rocks,” said musicologist Ondřej Pivoda. “The element swept him away so much that he threw himself into the waves crashing wildly against the rocks and almost drowned. In addition to other voyages, he also visited the port district of Hamburg, where he noticed distinctive types of sailors.”
In his colossal work, the author thus portrayed the atmosphere of life on a ship tossed by a storm: from the song of a young man in the guard’s basket and love songs at the helm, through the song of the old sailor Jakob, and an erotic scene in the cabin where a slave sings to his mistress, to the fishermen’s choral prayer to a starfish.
Vítězslav Novák was not the first to set Čech’s poem to music. “Before him, this theme was worked on by František Neumann, later the head of opera at the Brno National Theatre,” said Filharmonie Brno dramaturg Vítězslav Mikeš. “However, Novák disliked the work so much that he decided to set it to music in his own way – modern and artistically serious. The premiere in 1910 brought him to the forefront among Czech composers.”
The Brno performance will be performed by the Slovak Philharmonic Choir and sopranos Adriana Banásová and Tamara Morozová, tenor Jaroslav Březina, bass-baritone Tadeáš Hoza and bassists David Szendiuch and Jan Šťáva, together with the orchestra.
In the first half of the evening, two concert overtures by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy will be performed: ‘The Calm of the Sea and the Happy Voyage’ and ‘The Hebrides’. While in the former work Mendelssohn set a pair of Goethe’s poems of the same name to music, in Hebrides he was inspired by his own experiences from a trip along the west coast of Scotland. He was particularly enchanted by Fingal’s Cave, after which the work was originally named, but Mendelssohn later changed the name to Hebrides.
The concert takes place on Thursday and Friday from 7 pm at the Janáček Theatre. Tickets are available online at filharmonie-brno.cz, at Filharmonie Brno’s pre-sale, or at the venue before the event.
