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Putting their mark on the music

The Czech Philharmonic starts the new season with a flourish
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By Frank Kuznik
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
August 29th, 2007 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
Principal conductor Zdeněk Mácal leads an all-Beethoven program to kick off the orchestra's 112th season.
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Czech Philharmonic

Leila Josefowicz
When: Friday, Aug. 31, at 8
Where: Rudolfinum
Tickets: 220–600 Kč, available at the venue
For more information on the Czech Philharmonic season, check
www.ceskafilharmonie.cz

Zdeněk Mácal is catching his breath in the conductor’s room at the Rudolfinum after a rehearsal with the Czech Philharmonic. The orchestra recently returned from Potsdam, and while he talks workers are loading buses for Hamburg, where it has two performances scheduled at the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival. Then it’s on to Weisbaden, with a stopover in Prague for an all-Beethoven “prologue” concert to kick off the orchestra’s 112th season.
“It’s hard work,” Mácal says of the Czech Philharmonic’s ambitious touring and home performance schedule. “When I worked in the United States, we would do in three or four years what I do here in three or four months.”
But it’s great for classical music fans, who benefit from the orchestra’s wide-ranging repertory and stellar lineup of visiting soloists. The Beethoven concert will feature American violinist Leila Josefowicz, who has been playing professionally since the age of 10, performing the Concerto for D Major for violin and orchestra (opus 61).
“I know Leila, we worked together in the States when she was just a teenager,” Mácal says. “She’s excellent, a very good soloist.”
The feeling is mutual. “Maestro Mácal and I have done a lot of work together over the years, and it’s always a good musical experience,” says Josefowicz, speaking from Majorca, where she gave a recital last week. That program was more typical of her repertoire, with 20th-century composers such as Stravinsky and Prokofiev on the bill, along with a piece by contemporary Estonian composer Erkki-Sven Tüür.
Josefowicz says her work in modern and contemporary music has shaped her approach to the classics. “When you’re playing new works, you can’t rely on past references or recordings, so you’re on your own,” she says. “As a result, I’ve had to develop a very strong mindset and interpretive vision for what I want to do with music. So when I go back to playing a great standard work, I can’t help but think of it in those terms — re-evaluating, reassessing, intepreting with my own approach.”
Mácal talks about conducting the same way. “Music is flexible, like a piece of paper,” he says. “My style is to constantly change even a standard work like [Dvořák’s] New World Symphony. Maybe I’ll slow it down here, draw out a phrase there, emphasize something new. To do it the same way all the time would be boring.”
Mácal takes the same approach to programming. The formal opening concert of the Czech Philharmonic season Sept. 5, for example, is an homage to Czech music featuring two lesser-performed works: Dvořák’s Symphony No. 2 and Suk’s Ripening, a symphonic poem. These are not easy or even popular pieces, but they are a good fit for an orchestra regarded as the standard-bearer in carrying on the country’s great classical music tradition.
“Dvořák’s last four or five symphonies get played quite regularly,” Mácal notes. “His second symphony is beautiful, but never gets played in concert. The Suk piece is one of the four major works by him that we are playing over several years; this was the next logical one to do.”
The orchestra’s programming is also shaped by the sharp business sense of its innovative and hard-charging director, Václav Riedlbauch, who always has one eye on marketing opportunities. “Czech Television is interested in the [Sept. 5] concert, but I don’t think they would be if we were doing the New World Symphony again,” Mácal admits. Some of the Czech Philharmonic’s programming this year is also shaped by its recording contracts. The orchestra is in the midst of recording the complete symphonies of Mahler and Brahms for Octavia Records, a Japanese label.
As for what to expect at the Beethoven concert ... well, some of it will depend on what inspires Mácal that day. “I’m a very kinetic person,” he says. “I always try to find something that touches me — maybe a phrase that sings, or what the mood is like that day.”
Josefowicz will put her own imprint on the music as well. “A lot of traditional interpretations are great, but a lot are just lazy, so it’s important to do what you believe instead of just what you’re used to,” she says. “I wrote my own cadenzas for the piece, and I’m very happy with how they turned out. So it will be something new for everyone to hear.”
And there’s always the magic that Prague brings to the mix.
“I’ve played there twice before, and I’m really looking forward to coming back,” Josefowicz says. “It’s enjoyable in every way. The halls are incredible, the orchestras are at a very high level, the audiences are enthusiastic and it’s wonderful to walk around the city. I’m very excited.”

Frank Kuznik can be reached at fkuznik@praguepost.com


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