Martinů / OrffMartinů / Orff

Some works wait for their premiere in oblivion for many years, such was the fate of the first violin concerto by Bohuslav Martinů. Composed for the virtuoso Samuel Dushkin in 1933, it was not first performed until forty years later, after the musicologist Hans Moldenhauer found it and bought it from a Boston bassoonist. The Carmina burana, said to be “too conservative for the avant-gardists and too wild for the conservatives”, was written by Carl Orff, based on a manuscript collection from the Benediktbeuern. The medieval Latin and German poems from the 13th century were written down by monks at the foot of the Bavarian Alps; Orff chose twenty-four of the two hundred or so poems to combine into the form of a cantata.

Thanks to his childhood experience as a choral singer and his work as an assistant chorus master in an opera chorus, the vocal-instrumental works are close to Jaroslav Kyzlink’s repertoire. The Slovak violinist Milan Paľa has been involved in the performance of contemporary violin works for several years. Slovak soprano Mariana Sajko will perform alongside her Czech colleagues Svatopluk Sem and Ondřej Koplík.