10/02/2012

Katie Derham introduces the seldom heard Serenade for Orchestra by Jakub Ryba, plus Manfred Honeck conducts the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra in a performance of Dvorak's Stabat Mater. Written whilst Dvorak mourned the death of his daughter, Josefa, and finished following the tragic passing of his two remaining children, the Latin text to which he set the composition tells of the grief of the Virgin Mary at the death of her son, Jesus, as she stands under his cross.

Baritone Thomas Hampson performs Mahler's deeply moving Kindertotenlider with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, traversing the range of somber emotional responses a parent might pass through at the death of a child - from anguish, through fantasy resuscitation, to resignation and transcendence. The text, written as Ruckert attempted to come to terms with the loss of his children to scarlet fever, was set as a song-cycle between 1901-1904 by Mahler who, poignantly, lost his own daughter, Maria, to scarlet fever sometime later.

Jan Jakub Ryba: Serenade for Orchestra
Czech Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra
Vojtech Spurny (conductor)

c. 2.20pm
Dvorak: Stabat Mater Op. 58
Simona Houda-Saturova (soprano)
Marina Prudenska (alto)
Tomás Cerný (tenor)
Liang Li (bass)
Prague Philharmonic Chorus
Lukas Vasilek (director)
Czech Philharmonic Orchestra
Manfred Honeck (conductor)

c. 3.40pm
Cêsar Franck: Violin Sonata in A (dedicated to Eugène Ysaÿe)
Carolin Widmann (violin)
Konstantin Lifschitz (piano)

c. 4pm
Gustav Mahler: Kindertotenlieder
Thomas Hampson (baritone)
Czech Philharmonic Orchestra
Eliahu Inbal (conductor).