Aleksandrs Avramecs is one of the most promising young Latvian composers. His symphonic poem Ausma [Dawn] is a thoroughly original work, exuding a truly impressionistic palette of orchestral colours combined with great sophistication. The multi-layered sound textures imitate the play of light in the morning and the changing gradations of the rising sun’s glow.
With his Violin Concerto ‘To the Memory of an Angel’, from 1835, Alban Berg intended to pay tribute to Manon Gropius, the prematurely deceased 18-year-old daughter of Alma Mahler and Walter Gropius (the outstanding architect and founder of the Bauhaus). However, just a few months after completing the score, Berg took his own life, and so the work, a rare example of combining traditional diatonicism with the then avant-garde dodecaphony, is sometimes seen as its composer artistic testament.
Antonín Dvořák’s Symphony No. 6 in D major, Op. 60 was composed in 1880 with the Viennese audience and the international stage in mind. It draws primarily on Austrian symphonic traditions and is a conscious nod not only to the works of Beethoven, but also to Johannes Brahms, who was on friendly terms with Dvořák. Although the composer dedicated it to Hans Richter, conductor of the Wiener Philharmoniker, this four-movement work was first performed on 25 March 1881 in Prague. Received with particularly enthusiastic applause was the Scherzo, in which Dvořák introduced the rhythms of the furiant, one of the Czech national dances. The Viennese premiere took place in 1883 in the hall of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, with the resident orchestra conducted by Wilhelm Gericke. The Wiener Philharmoniker did not perform the work for the first time until 1942. In the meantime, Dvořák’s Sixth Symphony enjoyed great success in major concert halls in Europe and America.
Grzegorz Zieziula
