Brahms / Baborák / FranckBrahms / Baborák / Franck

Johannes Brahms described his Academic Festival Overture as “very boisterous potpourri of student drinking songs à la Suppé“. In the overture he quotes and promptly integrates four songs, composing it as an expression of gratitude to the University of Wroclaw for the award of an honorary doctorate honoris causa. The Belgian composer César Franck was seen as the heir to Beethoven’s reforms. Although he was mainly dedicated to organ music and symphonic poems in the style of Franz Liszt, Beethoven’s features emerge in the D minor Symphony. A pure and flawless work with extraordinary beauty of melodies, ingenious richness of polyphony, and magnificent architectural design, it was created between 1886 and 1888. Franck in it applied his favorite circular compositional principle, where individual themes transition from section to section, ensuring its integrity and unity. 

Radek Baborák, an outstanding French horn player who has recently expanded his talents to conducting and composing, stands as one of the most prominent figures on the world’s music scene. The author of L’Orangerie described the petite burlesque as “a personal, emotional record that I transformed into a few notes, which thus became the leitmotif of the composition.“