ORCHESTRAL CONCERT

HEROLD
Overture: Zampa

SMETANA
The Bartered Bride:
Polka, Furiant, Dance of the Comedians

BACH
Brandenburg Concerto No 4
Shahla Armitage violin
Louise Townsend Flute
Jan King Flute

DVORAK
Symphony No 6 in D

Conductor: 
Richard Howarth

Hérold’s opera Zampa ou La Fiancée de marbre (Zampa or the Marble Bride) was premiered at the Opera Comique in Paris on May 3, 1831. The somewhat grisly plot tells the tale of a pirate Zampa who jilted his bride-to-be Alice, a marble statue of whom subsequently came to life and dragged Zampa to his death in the sea. The sparkling overture has long been a concert favourite.

The Bartered Bride, composed in 1866, is Smetana's most celebrated opera and a cornerstone of Czech national music. The opera tells the story of young love, mistaken identities, and the triumph of true affection amidst a backdrop of rural Czech culture and traditions. The rustic but elaborately varied Polka comes at the end of Act I, sung and danced by villagers gathered in front of the inn to celebrate a spring holiday. At the beginning of Act II the people are now inside the inn. The men sing a drinking song, and after the women join them, all dance a Furiant, a fast Bohemian folk dance playing with metrical cross-currents. Act III takes place outside again, on the village green in front of the inn. A circus has come to town, and it offers a sample of its acts accompanied by the Dance of the Comedians.

Bach composed his six Brandenburg Concertos around 1721. The fourth was orchestrated for solo violin, two flutes and strings, and the soloists in our performance are the orchesta’s leader Shahla Armitage and the flute section Louise Townsend (principal) and Jan King.

Antonin Dvorak composed his Symphony No 6 in 1880. It was originally published as Symphony No. 1 (the earlier symphonies, apart from No 5 are still fairly rarely played today) and is dedicated to Hans Richter, conductor of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. It was one of the first of Dvořák’s large symphonic works to draw international attention: he manages to capture some of the Czech national style within a standard Germanic classical-romantic form. He pays a particular tribute to Johannes Brahms, whose Second Symphony, also in the key of D major, had been published just three years earlier.