Three New Music Options for Czech Journeys
Our Czech Journeys concert piece is a visual and musical journey through the culture, cities and landscapes of the Czech Republic. The piece was co-commissioned by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in 2013. Producing it involved two months of extensive photography across much of the Czech Republic during the summer and fall seasons. The music the orchestras chose for the commission was Smetana’s epic Má vlast. The 80+ minute work is our longest concert piece to date, which led to the choreography of well over a thousand carefully selected photographs. Following the premieres in Scotland and Toronto, we also performed shorter compilations of Smetana’s six symphonic poems in Louisiana and in Liverpool, England.
For the 2016–17 season, we’re offering some new musical pairings to showcase the beauty and variety of the Czech Republic. In addition to popular selections from Smetana’s Má vlast, orchestras can now also program Czech Journeys with Dvořák’s Serenade for Strings or Symphony No. 7, or Fibich’s At Twilight. Whichever version of Czech Journeys an orchestra chooses to program, it will make for a dynamic, culturally immersive evening of exploring a country that has inspired so much great music.
