BETWEEN BRNO, PARIS, AND LONDON

VÍTĚZSLAVA KAPRÁLOVÁ Military Sinfonietta, Op. 11
MILOŠ ŠTĚDROŇ Old and New Dances for Bass Clarinet, Piano, and Orchestra
HECTOR BERLIOZ Symphonie fantastique, Op. 14

Lukáš Daňhel bass clarinet
Kostiantyn Tyshko piano
Filharmonie Brno
conductor Anna-Maria Helsing

There are several themes linking three European cities in this concert programme. Internationally acclaimed Finnish conductor Anna-Maria Helsing is the Chief Conductor of London’s BBC Concert Orchestra, with whom she opened Brno’s Moravian Autumn festival in October 2025.

In 1938, Brno-born composer and conductor Vítězslava Kaprálová stood on the conductor’s podium of the BBC Orchestra in London while undertaking a scholarship residence in Paris.

On 9 February 2027, Brno composer and musicologist Miloš Štědroň will celebrate his eighty-fifth birthday. Among his many achievements, he and Leoš Faltus reconstructed Kaprálová’s Concertino for violin, clarinet and orchestra, a work she had begun composing during her stay in Paris. The programme will also feature Štědroň’s Old and New Dances.

In his Symphonie fantastique, premiered in Paris on 5 December 1830, Hector Berlioz expressed his infatuation with the actress Harriet Smithson, whose portrayals of Ophelia and Juliet in performances by a London theatre company had captivated Parisian audiences in the 1820s.