Bohemia

Idioma disponible: inglés

Yes, all these works do have a link some way or another with Bohemia; either the composers themselves were born or had lived or worked in Bohemia – or around, as is the case with Pavel Haas or Janáček who were Moravian, as a matter of fact. Zemlinsky was a full-blown Viennese but indeed he became conductor at the Deutsches Landestheater in Prague from 1911 to 1927, before having to flee Europe for reasons one may imagine. Both works by Janáček and Zemlinsky were written late in their composer’s lives: Janáček’s “Mládí, zláte Mládí” (“Youth, Golden Youth”) was premiered for his 70th birthday in 1924, while Zemlinsky’s Humoreske came into being in circumstances anything but humorous. The composer had emigrated to the USA in 1938 where he had eke out a modest living with commissions for tutorial compositions. Therefore he wrote the Humoreske for wind quintet in 1939, destined to be his very last composition: shortly after finishing the piece, he suffered a stroke and never recovered. The other works on this album by the Acelga Quintet – whose members met in 2012 while they were playing in prominent youth orchestras and academies, such as the European Union Youth Orchestra, the Schleswig-Holstein Festival Orchestra, and the Orchestra Academy of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, before taking a highly successful leap into the professional performing world – give a great insight into Central European music for wind ensemble from the first half of the 20th Century. And as to why the ensemble has taken the name Acelga which is the Spanish word for Chard, it may well be because the flutist’s name is Hanna Mangold – Mangold being the German for chard! © SM/Qobuz