The ostensible purpose of the Philharmonia Orchestra's three Bohemian Legends concerts in London this spring under Jakub Hrůša is to celebrate the music of Dvořák and his influence on his Czech compatriots. But the more didactic aim, as the conductor made clear in a short video before this series opener, is to elevate the works of Josef Suk to a more equal position in the Czech pantheon alongside those of Dvořák and Janáček.
If that is indeed the case then, on the basis of the first concert, the verdict is: job done. Suk's 1904 symphonic poem Praga was by some distance the evening's standout interest and performance. Praga is a colossal, affirmative and somewhat overly long celebration of the Czech capital, emerging impressively out of darkness and a roll of drums to the repeated and increasingly powerful invocation of a Hussite chorale first heard on the horns. Yet it somehow manages to avoid bombast and ends in a weighty blaze of orchestral colour to which the Festival Hall organ added its formidable voice. Hrůša's direction of the piece glowed with conviction from first to last.
The concert was opened and closed with Janáček: first in the form of his rarely heard but typically pungently orchestrated Jealousy, originally written as the prelude to his opera, Jenůfa, but later discarded; and finally with his ever popular and ever remarkable five-movement Sinfonietta, with the 13 extra brass players delivering their spine-tingling fanfares from in front of the organ. But the most substantial piece of this enjoyably idiomatic evening was Dvořák's deceptively imposing but essentially affable and liltingly rhapsodic violin concerto, which Arabella Steinbacher delivered with sweeping, if occasionally steely, charm and some irresistibly incisive phrasing, especially in the coruscating swirl of the finale. As so often these days, the soloist's encore was entirely otiose.
• 15 May. Box office: 0844 875 0073. Venue: Royal Festival Hall
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