The summer open-air Festival Špilberk, organised by the Brno Philharmonic, brought classical music and other genres to the grand courtyard of Brno’s Špilberk Castle during the third week of August. The festival’s 27th edition culminated on Sunday, 23 August, with Carl Orff’s cantata Carmina Burana, conducted by Dennis Russell Davies with the Czech Philharmonic Choir Brno. The concert also marked a symbolic farewell to trombonist Jiří Vydra, who brought his 45-year career with the Brno Philharmonic to a close that evening.
The Brno Philharmonic was founded in 1956 through the merger of the city’s radio and regional orchestras. Over the years, it has worked with a distinguished roster of Czech and international conductors, including Břetislav Bakala, František Jílek, Petr Altrichter, Jiří Bělohlávek, Charles Mackerras and Jakub Hrůša. Since 2018, the Brno Philharmonic’s chief conductor and artistic director has been Dennis Russell Davies, a renowned conductor and recipient of the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art, First Class. The Czech Philharmonic Choir Brno, led by Petr Fiala, specialises in oratorio, cantata and operatic repertoire and has collaborated with major orchestras and conductors around the world for more than 30 years. Its honours include the Echo Klassik Award in 2007, the German Record Critics’ Award in 2009 and a Classic Prague Award in 2019.
The world-famous and opulent Carmina Burana was preceded by the overture to Candide by the American composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990). Originally conceived as a musical, Candide premiered in 1956, though its operetta version did not emerge until 1989. The orchestra played this exuberant piece with real lightness and wit, with the woodwind section in particular bringing energy and agility to its lively melodic writing.
This was followed by a selection from Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s (1897–1957) song cycle Einfache Lieder for soprano and orchestra. Born in Brno, Korngold later lived in Vienna, where, even as a child, he moved in the artistic circles of the fin de siècle. The six-song cycle was originally written for voice and piano in 1916 and orchestrated in the 1920s. The Brno Philharmonic selected four songs from the cycle and invited the Israeli soprano Chen Reiss, a member of the Bavarian State Opera ensemble and a regular guest at the Vienna State Opera. The four songs – Schneeglöckchen, Das Ständchen, Liebesbriefchen and Sommer – evoke an idyllic world through their simple subject matter. Chen Reiss conveyed a wide range of emotions with finely judged nuance. Her clear, luminous voice remained secure at both extremes of the register, while retaining an intimate expressiveness throughout. Her rapport with the orchestra and with Dennis Russell Davies felt entirely natural. The first half concluded with Korngold’s cantata Der Sturm for mixed choir and orchestra, written in 1911. This vividly pictorial, almost programmatic setting of a text by the Romantic poet Heinrich Heine carries strong echoes of the nineteenth-century idyll. The work opens with thundering brass, followed by chromatic writing in both orchestra and choir. Under Dennis Russell Davies, the music built to an almost unbearable tension before opening out, like clouds parting, into the choir’s homophonic a cappella writing.
The second half brought the eagerly awaited Carmina Burana by Carl Orff (1895–1982). Chen Reiss was joined by tenor Richard Samek and baritone Aksel Daveyan, both established singers on the Central and Western European opera scene. The cantata draws on two dozen poems from the medieval Carmina Burana manuscript, dating from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries, which Orff set to music in 1937 with a keen sense of both medieval and classical aesthetics. The work opens and closes with a hymn to the power of Fortune, while the intervening texts celebrate spring and explore themes of drinking and love. Aksel Daveyan’s performance deserves particular praise. In the delicate Dies, nox et omnia, he impressed with the warmth of his voice and the remarkable ease with which he negotiated the extreme upper register. Chen Reiss was equally impressive, producing ethereal pianissimo high notes in some of the score’s most technically demanding passages. Richard Samek’s Olim lacus colueram, unfortunately, was less successful, his voice sounding somewhat constricted. The chorus is unquestionably at the heart of the work’s expressive power and grandeur, and the Czech Philharmonic Choir Brno delivered it at the highest artistic level, with impeccable diction. Together with the orchestra’s committed playing, this generated a powerful musical momentum and brought the festival to a magnificent close.
Performers:
Chen Reiss – soprano
Richard Samek – tenor
Aksel Daveyan – baritone
Czech Philharmonic Choir Brno, directed by Petr Fiala
Brno Philharmonic, conducted by Dennis Russell Davies
Programme:
Leonard Bernstein
Candide, overture
Erich Wolfgang Korngold
Einfache Lieder (Simple Songs) op. 9, for soprano and orchestra (selection)
Schneeglöckchen (Snowdrop) – Das Ständchen (Serenade) – Liebesbriefchen (Little Love Letter) – Sommer (Summer)
Der Sturm (The Storm), for mixed choir and orchestra
Carl Orff
Carmina Burana
Secular songs for soprano, tenor, baritone, choir and orchestra
Fortuna imperatrix mundi (Fortune, Empress of the World)
- Primo vere (In Spring)
Uf dem Anger (On the Green)
- In taberna (In the Tavern)
- Cour d’amours (The Court of Love)
Blanziflor et Helena (Blanchefleur and Helen)
Fortuna imperatrix mundi (Fortune, Empress of the World)
Sunday, 23 August 2026, 8 pm, Grand Courtyard, Špilberk Castle
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