World-renowned pianist and Opava native Lukáš Vondráček will perform in Sergei Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto, which is considered one of the most challenging works of romantic piano literature.

Sergei Rachmaninov
Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 3 in D minor, Op. 30

Sergei Rachmaninov
Symphony in D minor

Franz Schubert
Symphony No 8 in B minor ‘Unfinished’ D 759

Lukáš Vondráček – piano
Janáček Philharmonic Ostrava
Gabriel Bebeselea – conductor

The world-famous pianist Lukáš Vondráček, winner of the prestigious Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels in 2016, will return to his native Opava. Here he will take on a difficult task as a soloist in Sergei Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto, one of the most demanding works of Romantic piano literature. The difficulty of the composition surprised even the composer himself when he premiered it as a piano virtuoso with the New York Philharmonic in 1910. The piece makes extreme technical demands on the soloist, but at the same time, it does not lack charming melodic passages inspired by Russian folk music.

The same composer is also responsible for the second piece of the evening. In his youthful Symphony in D minor from 1891, Rachmaninov attempted to build on the work of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Although his ambitious plan for a large-scale symphony remained limited to the first movement, the surviving fragment nevertheless serves as an interesting testament to the then eighteen-year-old composer’s extraordinary compositional gifts.

Franz Schubert’s Eighth Symphony in B minor also remained unfinished, but the reasons for this are clouded in mystery. Music historians still argue whether the interruption was due to a medical diagnosis or simply a reconsideration of the artist’s plans. The two-movement fragment was discovered 37 years after Schubert’s death and soon became one of the groundbreaking works of musical Romanticism.