Symphony No. 1 | Prague Spring 2023

“I fell in love with the symphonies by Bohuslav Martinů more than twenty years ago when I was still a student,” says Cornelius Meister. “At that time, I got to know the incredibly powerful and deeply emotive recordings by Václav Neumann.” Incidentally, he was Meister’s predecessor in the position of general music director of the State Opera and State Orchestra in Stuttgart which the German artist has been holding since 2018. When Meister served as chief conductor of the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, he successively performed all six symphonies by Bohuslav Martinů. “The impressed audience was given the opportunity to experience the beautiful music that is rarely played in German-speaking countries for themselves,” he says. The recordings of the concerts were subsequently released on CDs and, in 2018, Meister won the prestigious OPUS Klassik Award in the category of the Conductor of the Year. 

Meister has a very warm relationship with Czech music. In addition to the music by Bohuslav Martinů and Antonín Dvořák, he likes to play the works by Leoš Janáček and, as a world premiere, he featured several works by contemporary composer Miroslav Srnka who is his generation peer. Even the opening composition of the concert, the Overture to the opera Hans Heiling by the German romantic author Heinrich Marschner, contains references to Czech themes. “The Svatošské skály rocks near Karlovy Vary play an important role in it. Marschner was, by the way, a bandmaster at the Court Theatre at Hanover, my hometown,” Meister concludes.