Rusza Festiwal Praska Wiosna 2021

W tym roku po raz drugi widzowie na całym świecie będą mogli oglądać transmisje na żywo z koncertów 76. Praskiej Wiosny w niezwykłej Sali im. Smetany Miejskiego Domu Reprezentacyjnego (czes. Obecní dům) za pośrednictwem sieci Czeskich Centrów.

Czeskie centra na 3 kontynentach udostępnią swoim widzom 4 koncerty bezpośrednio na swoich stronach na Facebooku. W programie koniecznie koncert inauguracyjny, podczas którego zabrzmi Moja Ojczyzna (Má Vlast) Bedřicha Smetany w wykonaniu Collegium 1704 pod batutą Václava Luksa czy Koncert Debiutowy, w którym wystąpi jeden z najbardziej utalentowanych młodych czeskich dyrygentów František Macek.

Więcej informacji TUTAJ

PROGRAM:

May 12, 2021 at 8 PM
Opening concert

PROGRAMME

Bedřich Smetana: My Country

PERFORMERS

Collegium 1704
Václav Luks – conductor

Performing Smetana’s Má vlast (My Country) at the opening concert of the 2021 Prague Spring Festival will be Collegium 1704 and the conductor Václav Luks. The originally announced performers, the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin and the conductor Vladimir Jurowski, have been forced to cancel their appearance because current public health measures in Germany governing the work of orchestras do not permit them to rehearse the work. “Today’s turbulent times favour bold solutions. Therefore, we have decided to put our trust in Václav Luks and his Collegium 1704, who are not only among the top Czech artists, but also have become one of the most respected ensembles of their kind in Europe. It so happens that it was at Prague Spring that they started on their path almost two decades ago,” says festival director Roman Bělor. “We have always made an effort to ensure that besides respecting tradition, the opening Prague Spring concert also brings an element of rediscovery and surprise. These are new interpretations and new ways of understanding the work by today’s musicians, who keep the work alive and still make its performing relevant in the 21st century”, says Bělor in conclusion.

“Performing Má vlast on period instruments and in the spirit of the interpretive customs of the late 19th century is an unusual challenge”, says the conductor Václav Luks. “In approaching Smetana’s iconic work, one must take into consideration not only the historical context of the composing of the individual movements of the cycle, but also the work’s noteworthy tradition of interpretation. After all, just from listening to the first recording of Má vlast conducted by Václav Talich in 1929, we realise how radically the interpretation of the Romantic repertoire has changed during the past century and how the varied palette of musical expressive resources and colours fell into oblivion in a relatively short amount of time. Our performance will not be a reconstruction for a museum. I hope we manage to present Má vlast in new colours while respecting the legacy of its ingenious creator”, maestro Luks emphasises.

This will not be the first performance of Má vlast by an orchestra using original instruments – at the 1996 Prague Spring opening concert, the London Classical Players played the work with the conductor Sir Roger Norrington. “Back then, that caused quite a stir”, says the festival programming director Josef Třeštík. “There has been considerable progress since then with the awareness of the Czech public about historically informed interpretation, and the local early music scene has flourished incredibly. Likewise, the activities of Collegium 1704 and Václav Luks in recent years show that they are far from being just leading interpreters of the music of Jan Dismas Zelenka and other Baroque composers, as they formerly presented themselves. Now, they are expanding their scope to include repertoire of the 19th century.”

May 20, 2021 at 8 PM
On the Wings of Dance

PROGRAMME

George Enescu: Romanian Rhapsody No. 1 in A major Op. 11
Édouard Lalo: Spanish Symphony Op. 21
Igor Stravinsky: The Firebird, suite from the ballet (1945 version)

PERFORMERS

Prague Symphony Orchestra
Ray Chen - violin
Ion Marin - conductor

A graduate of the Curtis Institute and winner of one of the most challenging competitions in existence, the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels (2009), violinist Ray Chen regularly sells out concert halls all over the world and captivates his audiences not only with his remarkable charisma but chiefly through his superb, distinctive performances on the 1735 “Samazeuilh” Stradivarius.

Ray Chen will perform for the Prague Spring public in the famous Spanish Symphony by French composer Édouard Lalo, written for the violinist Pablo Sarasate, who premiered the work in Paris in February 1875. The five-movement opus, one of the most extensive and most difficult compositions in the violin repertoire, is inspired by Sarasate’s native Spain, its lovely melodies and elemental rhythms, which provided a novel and exotic experience for the audiences of the day, undoubtedly one of the reasons why the piece became such a phenomenon shortly after its premiere.

Conductor’s Ion Marin country of birth is also reflected in the concert programme, which opens with George Enescu’s Romanian Rhapsody No. 1, the piece Marin presented in Prague to great acclaim back in 2010, when he performed it with the Czech Philharmonic. This work, full of dance stylisations and folkloric melodies, is one of Enescu’s most popular compositions, which could also be said of another piece on the programme, Stravinsky’s The Firebird. The ballet inspired by the Russian fairy tale about the Firebird and the evil Koshchei is a wonderful example of the composer’s admiration for the music of Rimsky-Korsakov and his interest in the varied colours of French Impressionism.

There’s yet another dimension to the evening’s programme, as Ion Marin tells us. “The programme has its inspiration in one of the important characteristics of Czech musical heritage, namely the transfiguration of folkloric sources,” he states. “From Lalo’s wealth of themes that later inspired Tchaikovsky to write his violin concerto, to Enescu’s innovative blending of urban folklore in a symphonic masterpiece, popular melodies enter the concert hall in all their beauty. Stravinsky’s Firebird in the original version explores in an audacious way the harmonic and rhythmic vibrancy of Russian folklore, opening the gates to modernity,” he explains. “As usual, the choice of programme combines musical research with the emotional richness that the artists wish to share with the public. Together with Ray Chen, we look forward to this musical voyage,” Marin concludes.

May 26, 2021 at 8 PM
Prague Spring Debut

PROGRAMME

Witold Lutosławski: Little Suite
Robert Schumann: Concerto for Cello and Orchestra in A minor Op. 129
Jean Sibelius: En saga
Antonín Dvořák: A Hero’s Song Op. 111

PERFORMERS

Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra
František Macek - conductor
Johannes Moser - violoncello

For every performer, a debut concert is a challenge, and especially when it takes place before a domestic audience. František Macek is one of the most talented young Czech conductors. So far, he has been working mainly in Scandinavia and Poland. “He capitalises on these experiences in a varied programme combining the music of Antonín Dvořák and Robert Schumann with an exciting piece by Jean Sibelius that is less well known in this country and with a classic of Polish music by Witold Lutosławski,” says the festival dramaturge Josef Třeštík. “I hope that thanks to this debut concert, Macek will establish contacts with Czech orchestras, and that he will win over the Prague public with the energy and intensity he devotes to every work.”

The Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra is one of today’s most important Czech orchestras. Since the 2018/19 season, its chief conductor and artistic director has been the German conductor Alexander Liebreich.

In recent years, the orchestra has collaborated with leading Czech and foreign conductors (Tomáš Netopil, Jakub Hrůša, Stephan Asbury, John Axelrod, Ion Marin, Michał Nesterowicz, and Wayne Marshall) and soloists (Krystian Zimerman, Alban Gerhardt, Steven Isserlis, Christian Lindberg, Renée Fleming, and Jonas Kaufmann). The Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra regularly commissions and performs music by leading contemporary Czech composers such as Pavel Zemek Novák, Jan Ryant Dřízal, Miroslav Srnka, and Jiří Kadeřábek. Among the many recordings made by the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra in recent years have been such important projects as a Janáček trilogy with the conductor Tomáš Netopil, the first complete cycle of recordings of the eight symphonies of Miloslav Kabeláč, and the complete piano concertos of Bohuslav Martinů.

June 3, 2021 at 8 PM
Closing Concert

PROGRAMME

Gustav Mahler: What the Wild Flowers Tell Me, 2nd movement from Symphony No. 3, arranged by Benjamin Britten
Benjamin Britten: Les Illuminations Op. 18 for high voice and string orchestra
Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 6 in F major Op. 68 “Pastoral”

PERFORMERS

Czech Philharmonic
Mark Wigglesworth - conductor

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