Last night BBC Radio 3 broadcast Detlev Glanert’s Prague Symphony, Lyric Fragments after Franz Kafka, his Symphony No.4 (2019-20), supposedly in the premiere performance but more likely the one from the following evening (December 9 last year) that Czech Radio relayed from the Dvořák Hall in the Rudolfinum, Prague, the Czech Philharmonic (the commissioners) conducted by Semyon Bychkov with Catriona Morison (mezzo-soprano) and Christian Immler (bass-baritone). It’s an impressive fifty-minute (not the stated forty-five) continuous score that is lyrical, dramatic and evocative, with a large orchestra used vividly, setting fragmentary texts by Franz Kafka that also yield a fragile beauty as well as an emotional urgency, music that deserves a first and subsequent listens.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001khb2

Bychkov is listed for future performances – in Amsterdam and Leipzig, with the UK premiere following on November 24 in the Barbican with the BBC Symphony Orchestra. (This Prague concert also included Sibelius’s Violin Concerto with Johan Dalene, a surprisingly lacklustre even messy affair, and far too fast in the Finale.)