Gala Opening Concert of Concentus Moraviae

The opening concert of this year's festival embodies the main dramaturgical idea in an exemplary manner, without being the least bit didactic. The renowned Finnish composer, conductor, and pianist Olli Mustonen will appear as the conductor of the Prague Philharmonia orchestra with the world premiere of his flute concerto "Sadunkertoja," which is a musical metamorphosis of a part of the famous Finnish folk epic Kalevala.

Given the dramaturgical focus on the works of Bedřich Smetana, presenting a number of his orchestral and operatic works in a reduced form, a certain revival is the opposite case of an arrangement of the String Quartet No. 1 in E minor "From My Life" for symphony orchestra. The author of this arrangement is the Hungarian-born, but later mainly American conductor and pianist Georg Szell, who in the first half of the 1930s became intimately acquainted with Prague as the conductor of the New German Theater (today's State Opera).

In his brilliant arrangement, the composition sounds so natural when performed by a symphony orchestra, as if it had never existed before in the form of just four string instruments.

The concert is held under the auspices of the Ambassador of Finland to the Czech Republic, H.E. Pasi Tuominen.