An evening full of joy, youthful energy, and musical beauty! This time, the JFO Orchestra joins forces with talented pupils from primary art schools. Together, they will perform Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations — a work radiant with elegance and charm, inspired by his admiration for Mozart — and Dvořák’s Eighth Symphony, which shines with optimism, melody, and love for the Czech countryside.

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For Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Mozart’s music was one of the unattainable ideals. From childhood, Tchaikovsky studied Mozart’s scores, developing a particular fondness for Don Giovanni, and in his mature years he found balance and serenity in the Mozartian style. The composer’s Variations on a Rococo Theme for cello and orchestra, written in 1876–1877 for the German cellist Wilhelm Fitzenhagen, a professor at the Moscow Conservatory, may also be seen as a tribute to Mozart. This graceful and elegant work, based on Tchaikovsky’s own Rococo-styled theme, remains a beloved staple of the cello repertoire.

“The sun is always shining in Dvořák’s music,” the once-feared Viennese critic Eduard Hanslick famously declared. Dvořák’s Eighth Symphony is likewise a work filled with joy in life and admiration for beloved nature. Most of the symphony was composed in late summer 1889, while Dvořák was staying at Vysoká, his country summer residence near Příbram, and it was completed in Prague in November of the same year. Dvořák’s brilliant compositional invention gave rise to a work of rich and varied moods, whose melodic abundance clearly reveals the influence of Czech folk music. The Eighth Symphony ranks among the most beautiful of Dvořák’s mature orchestral works.

For this concert, the members of the JFO Orchestra will be joined by talented pupils from primary art schools.