Musica non grata – Concert opening the 2020/2021 Season

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A gala concert titled Musica non grata will open the 2020/21 season and concurrently launch an eponymous four-year National Theatre Opera and State Opera series, dedicated to “unwelcome music” written by composers who fell victim to the despotism of the 20th-century totalitarian regimes.

The evening’s programme will feature works by three creators who, to a great extent, had similar fates – over a certain period of time, they lived and worked in Prague, and were part of the natural multicultural Central European space, from which they were driven out by the expanding Nazi ideology.

Attesting to the extraordinary talent of the Czech composer and conductor Vítězslava Kaprálová is her brilliant piano concerto, which will be performed by Alice Rajnohová, who has rediscovered it for the world of classical music. The oeuvre of Alexander Zemlinsky, a German-Jewish composer and conductor with Slavonic roots who as Kapellmeister for 16 years cultivated the opera company of the New German Theatre in Prague, is represented in the programme by magnificent settings of two Old Testament Psalms for chorus and orchestra. The gala concert will conclude with Bohuslav Martinů’s Czech Rhapsody, in which towards the end of World War I the then 28-year-old composer expressed his hopes for freedom and independence of the Czech nation.

Vítězslava Kaprálová
Concert for Piano and Orchestra in D Minor, op. 7

Alexander Zemlinsky
Psalm 23 for mixed choir and orchestra
Psalm 13 for mixed choir and orchestra

Bohuslav Martinů
Czech Rhapsody for baritone, mixed choir, orchestra, and organ