Concert with the season’s artists-in-residence

Jiří Teml orchestrated the Songs on One Page for me more than 20 years ago at the suggestion of Jiří Bělohlávek. I love them so much because Teml’s version is so successful at sensitively transforming the piano writing into orchestral form and enhancing the colouring. By contrast, Nipponari, a cycle for alto with Japanese texts, has very lush, full orchestration. I think Martinů still deserves greater international promotion, as has been seen in the last ten years with Julietta. I hope our recording of his songs will help them achieve the worldwide popularity that they deserve.

Magdalena Kožená

Robert Schumann was an absolutely unique person. He was a composer who was firstly to have been a poet, because as a young man he was better known as a poet and author. He became a composer rather by coincidence. To me, Schumann is the perfect essence of everything one understands by the word Romanticism. His music is deeply passionate and communicative, but it never descends into self pity. I don’t think there are many more moving compositions than the Adagio of Schumann’s Second Symphony. Unlike Mahler, he never gets caught up with himself emotionally, but the music he produces is like a crystal-pure extract. It is one of the loveliest symphonies I know, and one of the most difficult to perform. Schumann was the figure at the centre, surrounded by all of the great composers of his day of, beginning with Brahms and Mendelssohn and ending with Mahler. Schumann was one of the first early music specialists. He knew practically everything that had been written before him. He was an amazingly interesting man – if only we could have had the chance to get to know him.

Simon Rattle