Richard Strauss
Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks, Op. 28 TrV 171

Dmitri Shostakovich
Piano Concerto No. 2, Op. 102

Dmitri Shostakovich
Concerto for Piano, Trumpet, and String Orchestra, Op. 35

Richard Strauss
The Knight of the Rose, opera suite TrV 227d

Simon Trpčeski – piano
Andrei Kavalinski – trumpet
Janáček Philharmonic Ostrava
Petr Popelka – conductor

The entertainment that the New Year’s cheer requires will be provided by Shostakovich and Strauss.

It does not happen often that both concerts for piano and orchestra by Dmitri Shostakovich are performed at the same concert. Now you are going to hear them at the New Year’s Concert, framed by great symphonic compositions by Richard Strauss. “We would like to use this concert to celebrate the publishing of studio recordings of both these concerts with the protagonist of the New Year concert Simon Trpčeski,” says the director of JPO Jan Žemla.

Strauss’ Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks is written for a big orchestra and is as colourful as fireworks. After hearing Eulenspiegel in Paris, Claude Debussy has written: “You feel like laughing aloud or crying and you wonder that everything is as is usually is because it would not be surprising if everything was the other way around…”

The Knight of the Rose – Viennese masquerade, as Strauss himself called it, is a constant stream of musical ideas and traps to catch the audience. The composer’s knowledge of opera regularities were enormous, he was a highly requested conductor in Munich, Berlin, Vienna, and Bayreuth; he was inspired by Wagner and Mozart.

The two chosen Shostakovich’s pieces are very positive, accessible, and effective. He dedicated his Piano Concerto No. 2 to his son Maxim for his 19^th birthday. Maxim first performed it at the opportunity of ending his studies at the Moscow Conservatory in 1957.

Musicologist Miloš Jůzl said about Shostakovich’s second concert of the evening: “Joy of being alive – that is the mood of the concert. The composer is having fun and the oblivious listener is somewhat unsettled.” The fierceness of youth in this piece gives way to a creative invention in the form of many themes.

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