Nino Rota
Divertimento concertante for double bass and orchestra

Gustav Mahler
Symphony No. 4 in G major

Martin Raška – double bass
Kateřina Kněžíková – soprano
Janáček Philharmonic Ostrava
Tomáš Netopil – conductor

Nino Rota – Divertimento – Scale, fingering, inch exercise. It was originally intended to be a didactic tool for students of Petracchi’s double bass class at the Bari Conservatory. The pedagogue was also the first to interpret it. The audience, however, heard not only a technical exercise but a composition full of playfulness and calm, joy and focused thought.

Mahler completed his Fourth Symphony in 1900, the following autumn the work was premiered in Munich. Cold? Failure? Much worse. Unintelligible work without content, the critics wrote. Another journalist even concluded that the author was making fun of the audience. At the very end of the year, however, the symphony was successfully performed in Berlin. His novelty was conducted by the author, the rest of the program was led by Richard Strauss. Two years later, the composition was already on the program of the subscription cycle of the Vienna Philharmonic.

Mahler’s Fourth is lighter than his previous symphonies. The orchestra is more modest, for example, missing trombones and tuba, in the vocal part the alto is replaced by a soprano. The basic musical motif is the song Heavenly Life from the collection of German folk and old songs The Boy’s Magic Horn. It refers to the child’s understanding of heaven as a safe eternity.