Carnegie Hall to Celebrate 2024 Year of Czech Music with Performances in December

Over six days in early December, Carnegie Hall will join music lovers around the world in commemorating the 2024 Year of Czech Music, a decennial celebration that highlights legendary Czech composers. At the center of Carnegie Hall’s celebration, Chief Conductor and Music Director Semyon Bychkov and the Czech Philharmonic return to the Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage for the first time since 2018 for three concerts. They are joined by cellist Yo-Yo Ma, violinist Gil Shaham, and pianist Daniil Trifonov performing beloved and lesser-known concertos by Dvořák, plus music by Smetana, Gustav Mahler, and Janáček’s magnificent Glagolitic Mass featuring the Prague Philharmonic Choir.

The tradition of the Year of Czech Music began exactly one hundred years ago in 1924 with the centenary celebration of the birth of composer Bedřich Smetana. Since then, the Year of Czech Music has been held nearly every year ending in the number four. The year 2024 is the year of many anniversaries of Czech composers or composers active in the Czech lands. Of the yearlong celebration, Semyon Bychkov said: “However complex today’s world is, there is always a place for music that speaks directly to the human heart. This is precisely what the best Czech compositions offer: the capacity to transcend boundaries and ennoble with beauty, revealing human creativity to be an essential gift.”

The week’s festivities kick off at Carnegie Hall on Tuesday, December 3 at 8:00 p.m. when Maestro Bychkov and the orchestra are joined by Yo-Yo Ma for Dvořák’s Cello Concerto in B Minor on a program that also includes selections from Má vlast (My Country), a singular symphonic cycle by Smetana, the nineteenth-century composer widely known as the “father of Czech music.”

The following evening, Wednesday, December 4 at 8:00 p.m., Gil Shaham takes to the stage with Maestro Bychkov and the Czech Philharmonic to perform Dvořák’s vibrant, Czech folk-infused Violin Concerto on a program that also includes Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 5. This performance will be heard live by listeners around the world via the Carnegie Hall Live broadcast and digital series. Produced by WQXR and Carnegie Hall and co-hosted by WQXR’s Jeff Spurgeon and WNYC’s John Schaefer, the concert will be broadcast on WQXR 105.9 FM in New York and streamed online.

For the third and final evening with the Czech Philharmonic, on Thursday, December 5 at 8:00 p.m., Daniil Trifonov plays Dvořák’s imaginative and sole Piano Concerto on a program that also includes Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass, a “festive, life-affirming, pantheistic” work that the composer wrote to celebrate the spirit of the Czech nation. This performance features the renowned Prague Philharmonic Choir and soloists soprano Kateřina Kněžíková, mezzo-soprano Lucie Hilscherová, tenor Aleš Briscein, bass David Leigh and organist Daniela Valtová Kosinová.

The following evening, on Friday, December 6 at 7:30 p.m., the Prague Philharmonic Choir returns to present its own powerful all-Czech program in Zankel Hall. The ensemble—one of the world’s leading champions of Czech choral music—will present works by many of the nation’s most beloved composers, including Eben, Janáček, Dvořák, Martinů, and Jan Novák. Earlier in the week, the choir performs at a free Carnegie Hall Citywide event in Times Square on Wednesday, December 4 at 2:00 p.m., offering a program that includes seasonal selections and traditional holiday favorites, as well as “Goin’ Home”—a popular American reinvention derived from Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9, “From the New World.”

The weekend concludes with a concert by today’s most celebrated Czech string quartet—the Pavel Haas Quartet—performing an all-Czech program in Weill Recital Hall including Suk’s Meditation on an Old Czech Hymn, “St. Wenceslas,” Smetana’s String Quartet No. 1, “From My Life,” and Janáček’s String Quartet No, 2, “Intimate Letters,” on Saturday, December 7 at 7:30 p.m.

Photo credit: Petra Hajská