Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.In 2025, the Czech conductor Jakub Hrůša starts work at Covent Garden as music director of the Royal Opera. He is already known in the UK, conducting at Glyndebourne, Covent Garden and the Philharmonia, but the two Proms filled with Czech music which he and the Czech Philharmonic gave this week demonstrated the context from which he comes.Certainly in his hands the Czech Philharmonic is one of the world’s superlative orchestras. Throughout these pieces — Dvořák’s cello concerto and Suk’s second symphony in Prom 49, Dvořák’s piano concerto and Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass in Prom 50 — it showed distinctly melodious and sensuous qualities all its own, ranging from the harsh to the sweet. It was often at its most spellbinding in quiet music; the high strings created lingering magic.The orchestra excelled in judging special sound alchemies: a brief blend of harp and trombone in the piano concerto created a poetic frisson, while the spacious Modernist opening fanfare for brass and drums in the Glagolitic Mass spoke arrestingly of history and the universal. The overall Philharmonic sound often seemed to derive colour from the blends of its wind playing.Hrůša’s conducting was invariably energetic, without flamboyance. Even in the slowest passages, there was a propulsive quality. There seemed no ego in his direction: he was just fully engaged.Anastasia Kobekina was Tuesday’s captivating soloist in the cello concerto. She shaped Dvořák’s melodic lines with a wide variety of vibrato and portamento; her manner alternated engagingly between the private and the public, drawing us in and giving herself out. Mao Fujita played the taxing piano part in the piano concerto in an entirely private manner. Much of Dvořák’s piano writing is gorgeously wound into the orchestral texture: Fujita was enchanting in many quiet passages. Even the most brilliant sections had a reflective tone.Corinne Winters (soprano), Bella Adamova (mezzo), David Butt Philip (tenor) and Pavel Švingr (bass) joined the Prague Philharmonic Choir for the Glagolitic Mass, the heroic oratorio in which the pan-Slavist, pantheist, agnostic Janáček turned to Old Church Slavonic and the Glagolitic alphabet. (The only technical flaw of these concerts was that the choir, placed behind the orchestra, did not project entirely clearly, though I confess my command of Glagolitic is deficient.)Like so much of this composer’s work, his vocal writing is often challenging in the extreme: he asks soloists and chorus to enter vocal lines on exposed high notes, with attack. The effect is often strange — but the element of strain becomes rewardingly eloquent, tying into Janácek’s larger lyricism.These concerts’ two least known works were Suk’s second symphony (“Asrael”), an imaginative five-movement work that powerfully took the soul on a large metaphysical journey, and Vítězslava Kaprálová’s Military Sinfonietta in Prom 50. Ours is an era when the women composers of both past and present are newly honoured, but Kaprálová (1915-40) achieved much in her own short life, even conducting this sinfonietta at the Queen’s Hall, London, in 1938. It is a confident, impressive, versatile work, military but never martial.The richness of these two concerts makes you want to immerse yourself in more Czech music for months.Prom 49: ★★★★★Prom 50: ★★★★☆To September 14, bbc.co.uk/proms
