Czech Philharmonic • Bad Kissingen

The French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard, who was acquainted with Boulez, Messiaen, and Ligeti, is regarded by most listeners as an interpreter of music of the 20th-century avant-garde, but when he appears at famous venues like New York’s Carnegie Hall or the Konzerthaus in Vienna, he also plays older music, bringing a new perspective to its interpretation. He is also unafraid to take on major projects like performing Beethoven’s complete piano concertos, which he programmed to open the 2020/2021 season as the artist-in-residence of the orchestra Musikkollegium Winterthur.

Foremost among the many honours Pierre-Laurent Aimard has received is the prestigious International Ernst von Siemens Music Prize for 2017. As the son of two neuropsychiatrists, it was actually by chance that he discovered music. While going through the attic of a relative, he found various musical instruments including a piano. “It was love at first sight”, he says. At first he studied at the conservatoire in his hometown Lyon, but at age 12 he was invited to join Yvonne Loriod’s studio at the Paris Conservatoire. He was fascinated by music of the 20th century from his childhood, playing his first piece by Schoenberg at seven years of age! Fortunately, he had the chance to develop that interest once he was older. An important step was collaboration with Pierre Boulez and his newly founded Ensemble intercontemporain, and later he advanced his career by working with such leading composers as György Kurtág, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Marco Stroppa, and Olivier Messaiaen. 

Aimard’s 2018 recording of Messiaen’s Catalogue d'oiseaux earned the pianist many awards including Germany’s prestigious critics’ award Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik. He has also won acclaim for recording the complete piano music of György Ligeti, some of whose compositions will be appearing on the programmes of Aimard’s concerts this season in Europe, North America, Japan, and China in honour of the 100th anniversary of Liget’s birth. Also awaiting him are two premieres: a piano concerto by Clara Iannotta at the festival Acht Brucken and the Portuguese premiere of the composition Se da contra las piedras la libertad by Klaus Ospald. He has also engaged in long-term chamber music collaboration with Tamara Stefanović and the jazz pianist Michael Wollny, and with the French actor Denis Podalydès he is preparing a special theatrical project with music by Ligeti, Kurtág, Schoenberg, and Cage. 

Aimard is coming to Prague with Ravel’s Piano Concerto, which he has played with many ensembles including the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and George Benjamin at the BBC Proms, and his comprehension of Ravel’s music is also documented by a recording with the Cleveland Orchestra and Pierre Boulez (2010).

“I wouldn’t say that I’m a pianist—I’m a musician, and the piano just happens to be my instrument. I don’t like to limit myself to just a single function because that limits my perception of music”, says Aimard. Besides performing a wide range of repertoire as a pianist, he has also served in such positions as artistic director of the Aldeburgh Festival. He is a member of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts, and teaching has been an important part of this professional life: he has been an instructor at the Cologne University of Music and Dance and at Paris’s College de France, and he gives lecture concerts and workshops. In the spring of 2020 he relaunched his online project Explore the Score, which focuses on interpreting and teaching Ligeti’s music. 

An inspirational force, particularly in Czech music, Tomáš Netopil was Principal Guest Conductor with Czech Philharmonic from 2018-2024 performing regularly on tour and at concerts in the Rudolfinum Hall in Prague where he continues to conduct the orchestra’s New Year concerts which are live televised. In 2023/2024 season, Tomáš Netopil conducted opera productions including Janáček’s Jenůfa at the Hamburg Staatsoper and Dvořák’s Rusalka at the Prague National Theatre as well as symphonies with Frankfurt Opera Orchestra, Janáček Philharmonic Ostrava, Naples Philharmonic and Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra.

Opera productions in the 2024/2025 season include Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito at the Grand Théâtre de Genève, Die Zauberflote with the New National Theatre Foundation, Tokyo and Don Giovanni with Oper Köln. Netopil explores a wide range of symphonic repertoire in engagements with Oslo Philharmonic, Antwerp, Kuopio and Sydney Symphony Orchestras, Hong Kong Sinfonietta and Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. This season sees a welcome return to L'Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo as well as a debut with Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire. Another return is to Concentus Musicus Wien which builds on his work with period ensembles. As part of the Prague Spring Festival, Netopil will delight audiences with an authentic production of Mozart’s Requiem.

Seven years ago, Tomáš Netopil created the International Summer Music Academy in Kroměříž offering students both exceptional artistic tuition and the opportunity to meet and work with major international musicians. In summer 2021, in association with the Dvořák Prague Festival, the Academy established the Dvořákova Praha Youth Philharmonic with musicians from conservatories and music academies, coached by principal players of the Czech Philharmonic. Tomáš Netopil has held a close relationship with the Dvořák Prague Festival for some time and was Artist-in-Residence in 2017, opening the Festival with Essen Philharmoniker and closing the Festival with Wiener Symphoniker in Dvořák’s Te Deum. 

Tomáš Netopil’s discography for Supraphon includes Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass (the first ever recording of the original 1927 version), Dvořák’s complete cello works, Martinů’s Ariane and Double Concerto, and Smetana’s Má vlast with the Prague Symphony Orchestra with whom he’ll become Chief Conductor and Music Director from 2025/2026 season. During his tenure in Essen, his releases included recordings of Suk Asrael and Mahler Symphony Nos. 2, 3 6 and 9. 

From 2008-2012 Tomáš Netopil held the position of Music Director of the Prague National Theatre. He studied violin and conducting in his native Czech Republic, as well as at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm under the guidance of Professor Jorma Panula. In 2002 he won the 1st Sir Georg Solti Conductors Competition at the Alte Oper Frankfurt.

“Experts who have had the opportunity to peruse the score are enthusiastic over the beauties of the new composition. The opera The Two Widows is said to be worthy successors to The Bartered Bride. The composition is rather in the character of the salon, but once again there is Smetana’s lovely music that seems to flow directly from the songful breast of the nation itself!” That is how Jan Neruda welcomed Bedřich Smetana’s new opera The Two Widows two weeks before its premiere. It was first played on 27 March 1874 at the Provisional Theatre under the composer’s baton. Apart from the unfinished opera Viola, The Two Widows is Smetana’s only stage work based on a play. The author of the one-act comedy Les deux veuves, premiered at Paris’s Thèatre Française on 14 May 1860, was the French dramatist Jean-Pierre Félicien Mallefille. Two years later, the play was given at Prague’s Estates Theatre in a German translation, and on 25 May 1868 it was played in Czech with the title Dvě vdovy (The Two Widows) at the Provisional Theatre. The translator was Emanuel Züngel, and naturally it was he who adapted it into a libretto for Smetana, who had been looking for new subject matter for a comic opera. In the spirit of the subject matter, Smetana modelled his opera after the genre of the French opéra comique, creating a conversational salon opera with spoken dialogues. Later on, after having gone deaf, he set about revising the opera; the new version with musical recitatives and other alterations was premiered at the Provisional Theatre on 15 March 1878. The overture sets the mood of the opera, makes use of catchy motifs associated with the story’s characters (the ill-humoured gamekeeper Mumlal, the widows Karolina and Anežka, and Ladislav), and is dominated by the characterful, lively rhythm of the polka.

Thirteen years younger than Debussy, Maurice Ravel followed in the footsteps of the pioneer of Impressionism in many ways while also advancing the style. Already as a young man, he took a different path from that followed by the musical establishment, having been inspired both by Baroque music and by jazz and modern trends. He enjoyed experimenting, and he proudly claimed his Basque ancestry. His output was not large, consisting of piano music, chamber works, two piano concertos, ballets, two operas, and eight song cycles. Being an excellent pianist, he had long toyed with the idea of composing a work for piano and orchestra, but it would not be until the sixth decade of his life that he finished his piano concertos, one quickly after the other. The impetus that led him to write the concertos was his first successful tour of the USA in 1928, after which he planned another tour to present himself as the piano soloist in his new concerto. That tour, however, never took place. In 1932, Ravel suffered a head injury in a traffic accident, and his condition continually worsened over the last five years of his life.

In 1929, Ravel first wrote his Piano Concerto for the Left Hand in D major on commission for the Austrian pianist Paul Wittgenstein, who had lost his right arm during the First World War. Immediately thereafter, he went to work on his Piano Concerto in G major, and in conceiving it he took inspiration from Mozart: “In my opinion, the music of a concerto should be light and brilliant and should not descend into profundity and drama. It is said of certain classics that their concertos were written not ‘for’, but ‘against’ the piano. I agree completely. I intended to give the concerto the title ‘Divertissement’. Then it occurred to me that it was unnecessary to do so because the title ‘Concerto’ ought to be sufficiently clear.” In January 1932, the pianist Marguerite Long gave the work its premiere with Ravel leading the orchestra. It was Ravel’s conducting that got the worst reception from the critics. The soloist’s performance and the work itself received favourable reviews.

The piano takes part in the cheerful uproar right from the beginning, joined playfully by the percussion and piccolo. A moment later, a “jazzy” theme is heard in the piano and echoed by the clarinet, reminding us that the work was intended to captivate American audiences. Jazz enchanted Ravel when he heard it on his American tour, and in his concerto he combined it in an original way with Impressionistic dreaminess and with modern, rhythmicised tectonics. The second movement begins with the solo piano playing a slow, gentle waltz with a melody of breathtaking lyricism in the right hand. The melody is then taken up by the flute, and the orchestra quietly makes its presence felt. The English horn introduces another theme ornamented by the piano’s fanciful garlands, and a long trill illuminates the ending. We know from Ravel’s comments that the Adagio, which makes such a natural, fervent impression, cost him great effort, and he made many changes to it until the very last moment. The short, brilliant finale is entirely in keeping with Ravel’s playful compositional style. The piano alternates virtuosic runs and rhythmic passages with the orchestra, in which the strings get not a moment’s rest. Listeners will not miss the trombone glissandos, the bassoon solo, and whole array of percussion ranging from the whip to the snare drum and even a thump on the bass drum at the very end.