Despite his young age, he has managed to captivate audiences, critics, as well as the world’s leading conductors. He has been conducting assistant to Kirill Petrenko, the Chief Conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, and demonstrated his professional qualities with the Prague Philharmonia in the past.
The evening will open with Jockel’s composition Floris Glacialis (Ice Flower). He says that he has been inspired by looking at snowflakes, “how each one is absolutely individual but at the same time rigidly structured.”
In addition to being the conductor-composer, Jockel will also take on the part of basso continuo as harpsichordist, again in keeping with historical convention. He will play the harpsichord in Johann Sebastian Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 3, built according to a (modified) plan of one of the most important Baroque cyclic forms: a dance suite.
The Classical era will be represented by two compositions. Mozart’s Symphony No. 38 “Prague” belongs to masterpieces of this Salzburg-born composer, while testifying to his cordial relationship with the city of Prague.
The soloist of the evening is the young cellist Brannon Cho, who is praised by the critics for his “burnished tone, spellbinding technique, and probing musical mind”. He will showcase his skills in Haydn’s Concerto for Cello and Orchestra in D major.
This composition is one of the most important pieces in cello literature – although Czech listeners may be disappointed to learn that the assertion that it was composed for the Czech cellist Antonín Kraft has recently been proven wrong.
The Prague Philharmonia was founded in 1994 on the initiative of the conductor Jiří Bělohlávek (1946-2017) under the original name Prague Chamber Philharmonia. Since the 2015–16 season the orchestra has been led by the French conductor Emmanuel Villaume. Today it is one of the most recognised orchestras, not only among Czech but also world ensembles. Regular invitations to tour abroad as well as recording projects with the most renowned international labels bear testimony to this.
