Seong-Jin Cho

Hear the sledges with the bells—
Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!
While the stars that oversprinkle
All the heavens, seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells—
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.

– Edgar Allan Poe: The Bells

In December 1906, when Sergei Rachmaninoff turned to his friend Nikita Morozov in search of literary material for a choral work, he came away empty handed, but while visiting Rome in early 1907, he received an anonymous letter with remarkable contents—a Russian translation of Poe’s poem The Bells. Besides urging him to read the poem, the letter also pointed out that the material was highly appropriate for a musical setting. Rachmaninoff arrived at the same conclusion:

“All my life I have taken pleasure in the differing moods and music of gladly chiming and mournfully tolling bells… In the drowsy quiet of a Roman afternoon, with Poe’s verses before me, I heard the bell voices, and tried to set down on paper their lovely tones that seemed to express the varying shades of human experience.” The effort proved worthwhile. In 1913, Rachmaninoff conducted the premiere of his choral symphony The Bells in Saint Petersburg. 

Performing The Bells at the Rudolfinum are the Prague Philharmonic Choir led by Simon Halsey, who collaborated with the Czech Philharmonic during the 2025/2026 season on Dallapiccola’s opera Il prigioniero. “So there was no escape for me”, he says about his career, following the footsteps of his father, a choirmaster, and his mother, a conducting teacher. His father had worked closely with Benjamin Britten, so as a boy, Halsey saw the composer every summer at the festival on England’s east coast, where Britten premiered most of his works. The artistic director of the King’s College Choir, Cambridge, which Halsey attended, was also a close friend of Britten and the college’s principal pianist and organist — and so young Simon even sang at a memorial service honouring the composer’s memory.
According to him, Britten’s music stirs the intellect just as strongly as it moves the heart. The choirmaster of the Oslo Philharmonic adds that he feels strongly connected to Britten.

Programme

Benjamin Britten
The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra (Variations and Fugue on Theme of Purcell), Op. 34

Sergei Rachmaninoff
Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43
The Bells, a choral symphony for soloists, mixed choir, and orchestra, Op. 35

Performers

TBC narrator

Seong-Jin Cho piano

Kristina Mkhitaryan soprano
Pavel Černoch tenor
Aleksei Isaev bass

Prague Philharmonic Choir
Simon Halsey choirmaster

Semyon Bychkov conductor
Czech Philharmonic