Martinů. Barber. Beethoven

This season's opening concert might well be heard as an echo of the Prague Philharmonia's long-awaited 2026 US tour, one that took the orchestra to three states and culminated in a phenomenally successful debut at New York's Carnegie Hall. Under the baton of music director Emmanuel Villaume, for this very special evening the orchestra welcomes another of its US touring partners, outstanding Canadian violin talent Blake Pouliot.

Our first half explores the idea of the displaced composer looking back homeward, and of trans-Atlantic musical dialogue. Whilst American composer Samuel Barber began work on his Violin Concerto in Switzerland, Bohuslav Martinů wrote his Sinfonietta 'La Jolla' in New York and with his Bohemian homeland very much in his thoughts. Whilst Barber's work on his concerto was interrupted in 1939 when the outbreak of WWII necessitated his return home to Pennsylvania, where the concerto was subsequently completed, in 1941 the nazi-blacklisted Martinů arrived in the US, having escaped from Paris as the Germans marched on the city. Both works, then, are inextricably linked to their composers' respective life narratives, and to the turbulence of the era of which they are a product.

What finer symphony for our second half, then, than the one that has come to symbolise most famously the idea of fate and man's resistance to it? Beethoven takes us on a journey from darkness to triumph, providing a powerful conclusion to an evening of music born in times of uncertainty.