Arthur Honegger
Pastorale d’été, H. 31

Dmitri Shostakovich
Piano Concerto No. 2, Op. 102

Ludwig van Beethoven
Symphony No. 6 in F major, Op. 68, “Pastoral Symphony”

Federico Colli – piano
Janáček Philharmonic Ostrava
Petr Popelka – conductor

It was composer Darius Milhaud who in 1920 invited Honegger and four friends to his apartment in Paris to organize a concert there. One of the guests was the critic Henri Collet, who then wrote excitedly that the “Les Six” were new “The Five”, referring to the alliance of Russian composers. This brand made the composers highly requested. Honegger was so busy that in the summer of 1920 he decided to “escape” to Swiss Alps. His stay there resulted in the creation of a remarkable composition Pastorale d’été. It was already popular at its premier in 1921.

Shostakovich composed the Piano Concerto No. 2 in 1957 as a present for his nineteen-year-old son Maxim. Shostakovich included in the music various family references – inside jokes that only he and his son could understand. The piece is charming, playful, and fun and provides a high contrast to the author’s more serious, anxiety-filled compositions which made him the critics’ laughingstock.

According to his close friends, Beethoven loved the countryside where he could go on long walks. It is this man that is captured in his idyllic Symphony No. 6. The name of each movement defines what the music is representing: 1. Awakening of cheerful feelings on arrival in the countryside, 2. Scene by the brook, 3. Merry gathering of country folk, 4. Thunder, Storm, 5. Shepherd’s song. Cheerful and thankful feelings after the storm.

The concert is held in cooperation with the statutory city of Opava, the Opava Cultural Organization and with the financial support of the Moravian-Silesian Region.