Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra

Bedřich Smetana’s life was overshadowed by the political turmoil of the time. Smetana was a follower of Franz Liszt, and wrote music with programmatic qualities – tone poems whose national colour couldn’t be ignored. The »old Czechs« placed him in the Wagner and Liszt camp and didn’t hesitate to defame Smetana, who was director of the new Czech National Theatre. This hurt the composer greatly and contributed to his declining health. It was during this phase in the late 1870s that he wrote the six-part cycle »Ma Vlast« (My Country): poetic musical portraits of the landscape, nature and history of his homeland.