Mozart. Penderecki. Gluck. Martinů

Last season, the Greek flutist Stathis Karapanos recorded an album with the Prague Philharmonia for the prestigious Warner Classics label. It features the complete repertoire for flute and orchestra by Krzysztof Penderecki, a leading figure of Polish music in recent decades. Karapanos will perform one of these works, Sinfonietta for Flute and String Orchestra, on the fourth evening of Orchestral Series A under the direction of Polish conductor Łukasz Borowicz. 

Together they will also present Mozart’s Flute Concerto No. 2 in D major.

The first concert of 2025 will also present dance music of different styles. The 18th century will be represented by ballets from Mozart’s Idomeneo and Gluck’s Don Juan, compositions that, although separated by 20 years, are united by the same inspiration from the strong French dance tradition. In fact, Gluck wrote his Don Juan specifically for Paris, and Mozart drew on experiences gained during his time in Paris to compose the ballet music for Idomeneo.

The third ballet of the evening, Échec au Roi, also relates to the city on the Seine. Its composer, Bohuslav Martinů, is intrinsically linked to the French metropolis, and it was there in the 1930s, when composing his three ballets, that he developed his distinctive compositional language, into which he also introduced elements of jazz.