NOSPR / Webster / The Fun-Fair and the Moonrise Kingdom - NOSPR

If Dvořák, Kisielewski and Britten could meet – would they find a common language? Certainly so, only that would be neither Czech, nor Polish, nor English, but the language of humour and classical proportions.

The Carnival Overture is its composer’s declaration of faith in the vital power of ethnic music. Remarkably, it is the central part of the “Nature – Life – Love” trilogy. Dvořák did not approach folk themes with a scholarly studiosity. Instead, seeking inspiration in their rhythms and melodies, he created an exuberant vision of his homeland’s folklore. The Slavic pulse in Dvořák’s work was so strong that it forced its way into scores, even when, having crossed the Atlantic, the composer decided to write national music for the Americans – this might be the reason why the Symphony No. 9 “From the New World” seems to resonate with Prague nostalgia more than with echoes of the prairies.

Humour is probably the most important aesthetic value in music composed by the erudite, author and politician, Stefan Kisielewski. Similarly to Dvořák, while drawing from ethnic traditions, the Polish composer also carefully listened to town life: both the sounds of its fairs and its everyday rhythm. The Fun-Fair, self-identifying in its subtitle as a single-act ballet with prologue, paints a sonic cityscape within a neoclassical framework.

Benjamin Britten’s works also show an unshakable faith in the power of musical tradition. There is no dearth of tributes to the Englishman’s excellent predecessors in his oeuvre, one of the most beautiful testimonies to his faith in the heritage of British culture being The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra. The piece is a cycle of variations on a very short theme from Abdelazer by the Baroque master Henry Purcell. The promise made in the title of the work is fulfilled in a pedantic presentation of each section of the orchestra and every family of instruments. The whole is intricate enough to have proven worthy of a prologue to one of Wes Anderson’s films (Moonrise Kingdom, 2012).

Krzysztof Siwoń

Concert duration: approximately 60 minutes