On Sunday 8th January, the online audience will have a chance to hear well-known and widely loved pieces by Viennese masters. This time the concert programme includes overtures, arias, and duets from operettas by Franz Lehár and Imre Kálmán, eminent Hungarian-born composers of Viennese operetta.
This year, the orchestra’s guests will be Karina Skrzeszewska (soprano), Adam Sobierajski (tenor), and Stanisław Kuflyuk (baritone). The concert will be conducted by the popular José Maria Florêncio. Marcin Trzęsiok writes about the programme of Sunday’s concert:
The phenomenon of operetta was born in the merchant culture of the 19th century, although its historical roots are deeper. We find them in fair performances (French vaudeville, the English Beggar’s Opera) and more noble, Italian opera buffa (…). It was implanted in Vienna by a Belgian, Franz Suppé. It flourished there, soon overshadowing its Paris models. Important changes happened: most of all, cancan was replaced by waltz. Among the great composers of Viennese operetta are Hungarian composers Franz Lehár and Imre Kálmán. They are part of the so-called silver age generation (the golden age was attributed to the Strauss dynasty). They created their masterpieces in the 20th century, ruthlessly defeating their avant-garde competition… The operetta was a distorting mirror of bourgeois mores. But its ironic criticism had an absolving character of intoxicating fun which today captivates the senses.
Streaming will be available on the websites of the NOSPR and Polish Radio Channel 2 on 8th January 2017 at 12pm. The NOSPR is the latest of the Polish music institutions – along with the National Philharmonic and the Teatr Wielki National Opera – to broadcast some of their events online.
The NOSPR was founded in 1935 in Warsaw by Grzegorz Fitelberg, who led it until the outbreak of World War II. In 1945, the orchestra was revived in Katowice by Witold Rowicki. Many renowned conductors and soloists have performed with the NOSPR, including Martha Argerich, Leonard Bernstein, Rudolf Buchbinder, Placido Domingo, Barbara Hendricks, Witold Lutosławski, Kurt Masur, Krzysztof Penderecki, Mścisław Rostropowicz, Artur Rubinstein, Isaac Stern, and Krystian Zimerman. The orchestra has performed in nearly all European countries and in the Americas, as well as in Japan, Hong Kong, China, Australia, New Zealand, Korea, Taiwan, and in the Persian Gulf countries.