The Czech Philharmonic Brings the "Year of Czech Music" to Carnegie Hall
Last night, Carnegie Hall was transformed into an outpost of Eastern European culture. There were flowers on stage and bouquets for the musicians. Patrons in black tie and glittering evening gowns double-kissed each other as they eagerly waited in line for their $26 glass of Sekt... er, Champagne. Even the President of the Czech Republic was in attendance, sitting in a first tier box with Clive Gillinson.
Hanging above the stage were a pair of banners that broadcast the purpose behind all of this old-world pomp. One read "Year of Czech Music: 2024", a once-a-decade event that purports to "celebrate Czech music around the world" and coincides with the birth anniversaries of at least a half-dozen Czech composers, including Bedřich Smetana, Leoš Janáček and Bohuslav Martinu. At Carnegie Hall alone, there have been no fewer than seven Czech music events this week, including three from last night's featured guest: the Czech Philharmonic, the national orchestra of the Czech Republic and its foremost cultural ambassador.
Founded in 1896, the Czech Philharmonic has weathered more than its share of cultural and political upheaval, surviving two World Wars, the Cold War and the subsequent Velvet Revolution, all the while preserving their unique Czech sound. Since 2018, its been led by Semyon Bychkov, 72, who seems to have finally found a home after a long career as a journeyman conductor. (Bychkov says he'll step down after his current contract ends in 2028.) Bychkov, who was born in the former Soviet Union but emigrated to the U.S. when he was in his 20's, says he's connected with the musicians over their shared affinity for Czech music, as well as his own personal journey.
"I was told early on," Bychkov told Bachtrack in 2023, "that if I were just a Russian, or just an American, it probably would not really work. But because I’m a Russian who rejected the system and went away, they identify with that."
Sparing no expense, each of the Czech Philharmonic's concerts this week has featured a megawatt soloist performing one of the three concertos of Antonin Dvořák, still the best-known Czech composer more than a century after his death. (At intermission, the NYC-based Dvořák American Heritage Association awarded the Czech Philharmonic and Bychkov its inaugural Antonin Dvořák Prize for "their extraordinary contributions to Czech music.") Tuesday's concert featured Yo-Yo Ma playing the warhorse Cello Concerto, while Wednesday's program had Gil Shaham perform the Violin Concerto. (You can hear an archived stream of Wednesday's concert on WQXR.com.)
Last night's concert featured Daniil Trifonov, one of today's most exacting, insightful young pianists, in a performance of Dvořák's early Piano Concerto (1876). Wait, Dvořák wrote a piano concerto? Yes, but it's been all but forgotten, a victim of musicians and critics convinced it has both vexing technical challenges and a lack of virtuosic pizazz.
“It is pianistically incredibly hard," Bychkov says, "but it doesn’t sound it.”
To my ears, it was clearly influenced by Brahms' first piano concerto: while never reaching that masterpiece's level of sophistication (Dvořák was 35 when he wrote it), Dvořák matches Brahms' seamless blend of piano and orchestra throughout its 40 minute length. At turns sparkling and dramatic, it unfolds over a traditional three movement structure. The opening Allegro was threaded with an insistent almost Beethoven-like agitation (agitato), while the lyrical andante seemed to echo the "Going Home" theme from Dvořák's yet-to-be-written "New World" symphony. The finale featured a call and response dynamic that carried through to the concerto's lively, if a bit drawn out, conclusion.
Whatever musical flaws beset this piano concerto, Trifonov played it with total commitment and fiery intensity, all the more remarkable given the probable lack of demand for this concerto elsewhere. After four enthusiastic curtain calls, Trifonov offered "The Silver Fairy" from Tchaikovsky's The Sleeping Beauty (arr. Mikhail Pletnev) as a trifling, if enjoyable encore.
The second half of the program was given over to Janáček's overwhelming, technicolor Glagolitic Mass (1927), a rarely heard late masterpiece whose opening brass fanfare sent tingles down my spine. Over the next 45 minutes, this work for orchestra, chorus and soloists proceeded through Janáček's jerking rhythms and soaring crescendos, simultaneously manic and sublime. For me, the highlight was the fifth section, Svet (Sanctus): after a plaintive violin solo (played by concertmaster Jan Mracek), the four soloists and chorus enter with dark gravitas. Then, after 2 1/2 minutes, the horns signaled a sudden shift to sunlight, alongside trumpets and oscillating strings. To me, it sounded like a predecessor to both Carl Orff's Carmina Burana (1937) and Steve Reich's Different Trains (1988).
The full Czech Philharmonic was joined onstage by the Prague Philharmonic Choir and soloists, including three native Czechs: soprano Kateřina Kněžíková, mezzo soprano Lucie Hilscherová, and tenor Aleš Briscein, alongside American bass David Leigh. Daniela Valtová Kosinová brilliantly played Janáček's idiosyncratic organ part on Carnegie's barely adequate electronic instrument; one can only imagine how Stern Auditorium would rock if it still had its original pipe organ for occasions like this. Bychkov, who has spoken about his difficulties grappling with Janáček's music, led a performance that held together, if not quite reaching the ecstatic heights of native Czech conductors.
On their website, the Czech Philharmonic touts their three-concert Carnegie run as a "privilege granted to only a handful of visiting orchestras...including the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics." (Ahem.) But, while the Czechs might not be in the same stratospheric realm as those unparalleled orchestras, they should be no less proud of their role preserving their rich musical heritage, performing too-rarely heard works with all the passion and provinciality you could want.
“It's a certain soft-grained way of creating a sound," Bychkov has said of the Czechs. "It is the dancing aspect – the Czechs love dancing and they love singing... But there is one other thing which the world may not be necessarily conscious of. It's their history as a country. Nationalism often is meant as a bad word, but in some cases it’s simply the need to preserve your own identity. When one is conscious of that, one hears that pride in the music.”
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