Katowice Culture Nature Festival / Return to Paradise? / Orchestra di Santa Cecilia / Harding / Bell - NOSPR

The neoclassical balance to be found in the Violin Concerto in A minor is not only due to Antonín Dvořák’s own efforts, but also to the persuasion of its dedicatee, the great violinist Joseph Joachim, whom the composer himself asked for advice. The themes of this three-movement work are full of Slavic intonations, at times lively and at times lyrical. The heart of the Concerto is the middle movement – one of unusual size and creating an idyllic aura: its cloudless skies are only rarely spoiled by passing worries.    

The main problem troubling Gustav Mahler – the intuition that beauty is but a deceitful escape from the tragic condition of the human being – is already present, with its full force, in his Symphony No. 1. The work opens with one of the most wonderful musical images of spring awakening, which fills the care-free heart of the youthful wanderer (Mahler used a quote from his own song  I Went This Morning over the Field). Slowly, however, dramatic tones begin to show – nature is no paradise and the veil of its seductive forms hides suffering. It is not only the human being that is touched by agony, but other creatures as well. This is “told”, in a tone of tragic irony, by the third movement – a grotesque funeral march, inspired by a picture of a hunter seen off to his eternal rest by a procession of animals. The finale begins with an explosion of despair. The protagonist of the symphony, in Mahler’s own words, “triumphs only in death, defeating himself. Then, the miraculous allusion to the days of youth will be heard.”

Marcin Trzęsiok 

Concert duration (intermission included): approximately 110 minutes