Enescu, Vajda, Dvořák

Scarcely a year after the work's world première in Prague, János ('Hans') Richter - a friend of DvoÅ™ák's and one of the most dedicated proponents of his works - placed the Symphony No. 8 on the Vienna Philharmonic's concert programme. He informed the composer how the performance had gone in a letter: 'I'm certain that even you would have been amazed at how the orchestra played. We all knew that your symphony is an entirely extraordinary creative work and were as one in our enthusiasm for it. It was a fervid and outright triumph.' DvoÅ™ák had composed the piece using the melody of a Czech folk song as its basis, closing it with a splendid sequence of variations. The Romanian violin virtuoso and composer George Enescu also made use of folk music in composing his Rhapsody No. 1. 
Allusions to folk music can also be found in the piece by composer-conductor Gergely Vajda, who started his musical career as a clarinettist. This is how the composer describes his work now being given its world première: 'I am familiar as an insider with both the clarinet and the symphony orchestra, regard them as my own, and speak both languages as a native. I didn't want to write a clarinet concerto in the classical sense. One inspiration, I might note, was Prokofiev's Symphony-Concerto for Cello, in which, although the cello takes a solo role, the work is not constructed as an interchange between the solo instrument and the orchestra, and in which there is no intention at all for the ensemble to simply provide accompaniment. In my work, two soloists play equal roles. In writing the parts, I was thinking about the two first clarinettists from the MR Symphonics, and they are the ones who will be playing at the première. I feel that the Clarinet Symphony is the most personal work of my career thus far.