Press Release: The 64th Prague Spring International Music Festival
Tomorrow and Friday night, the Czech Philharmonic will perform a concert version of fragments from the opera Julietta by Bohuslav Martinů under the baton of Sir Charles Mackerras with the participation of top singers from around the world with Magdalena Kožena in the leading role. After numerous preparatory events, this will bring the project Martinů Revisited into its realization phase. At the initiative of the Bohuslav Martinů Foundation and of the Bohuslav Martinů Institute, with the broad participation of Czech and foreign cultural institutions, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the composer’s death, increased attention will be paid to his work and to the worldwide context of his composing.
Martinů’s music will therefore rightfully become one of the programming priorities of the 2009 Prague Spring festival and of the following annual festival in 2010, when the cultural public will commemorate the 120th anniversary of the composer’s birth. Dominant among the works by Martinůincluded in the festival’s programming will be the composer’s music for voice and instruments. In the course of this year’s festival there will be successive performances of the song cycle Niponari, performances of the complete Polička cantatas (Legend of the Smoke from Potato Fires, The Romance of the Dandelions, The Opening of the Springs and Mikeš of the Mountains) and The Wedding Shirt, in 2010 Czech Rhapsody and a staged performance of the cantata Bouquet of Flowers. Besides a broad selection of chamber works, among the composer’s orchestral compositions included in the festival program for 2009 will be the Double Concerto for two string orchestras, piano and timpani, H 271,
performed by the Czech Philharmonic and Zdeněk Macal, Rhapsody, H 171, with the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg and the conductor Emmanuel Krivin,Sinfonietta La Jolla, H 328, with the Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra of South Bohemia and Stanislav Vavřinek and the Toccata e due canzoni, H 311, with the Kammerorchester Basel, the ensemble to which Martinů dedicated the work and which gave its first performance under the baton of Paul Sacher in 1947. In planning performances of works for soloist and orchestra, the festival’s intention was arrange performances by foreign guest soloists. Performing the composer’s Violin Concerto No. 2, H 293, will be Frank Peter Zimmermann together with the Norddeutscher Rundfunk Sinfonieorchester Hamburg and the conductor Christoph von Dohnanyi, and performing the Duo Concertant for two violins and orchestra, H 264, will be the French violinist Regis Pasquier and Bohuslav Matoušek, the artists who have recorded the work for the Hyperion label.Bohuslav Martinů the man and his works will also be commemorated in the programming of both year’s festivals in relation to his teacher Albert Roussel and to Martinů’s own pupils (for example, this is the concept for the programming of the concert of the Czech Nonet on 24 May in Vencovsky Assembly Hall at the University of Economics), and music inspired by Martinů’s works will also be included (e.g. Variations on a Theme of
64th INTERNATIONAL MUSIC FESTIVAL
PRAGUE SPRING
10 December 2008
Bohuslav Martinů by Zdeněk Zouhar and Sonata No. 2 for violin “In Memory of Bohuslav Martinů” by Jaroslav Doubrava).Prague Spring will also participate in preparations for an international musicological conference on the composers works, organized by the Bohuslav Martinů Institute, to be held during the festival on 29 – 31 May 2009.