20th Špilberk Festival with Young Talent and Grammy Holders

26 July 2019, 1:00
20th Špilberk Festival with Young Talent and Grammy Holders

From the second half of August the grand courtyard of Špilberk Castle will once more host an open-air music festival with an international line-up. The Špilberk Festival traditionally offers four concerts and two ‘cine-concerts’. The guests for this year’s 20th festival include among others the overall winner of Talentmania Patricia Janečková and the Grammy award winners The Klezmatics. 

The festival will open with the twenty-one-year-old soprano Patricia Janečková. The overall winner of the Talentmania competition has prepared arias from operas and operettas, including for example Berlioz, Lehár, Offenbach and Dvořák. “She will be accompanied by our orchestra under the baton of Roosto Joost. A few days later we will repeat the programme in a grand open-air concert in Berlin,” stated the director of the organisers, the Brno Philharmonic, Marie Kučerová.

The international Špilberk Festival will take place from 14 to 22 August 2019 in the courtyard of Špilberk Castle.

One day later, on 15 August, the courtyard will play host to The Klezmatics, world legends in klezmer. The name of the group, founded in 1986, hides a reference to the then well-known punk band Plasmatics. “And something of the unorthodox punk approach is clearly there in the works of The Klezmatics. Otherwise a number of their songs have a political subtext, many warnings against the abuse of religion to spread hatred, others for example touching on homosexuality or the feelings produced by marihuana. Their last studio album from 2016 Apikorism/Heretics is dedicated to all heretics casting doubt on the great truths,” says musicologist Matěj Kratochvíl. While the members of the group taught themselves the genre from the pre-war masters, this is not museum-like reconstruction of the music but a revival in a new context. At the same time they do not want to present klezmer as only music for a joyful jig, but also as a means of expressing ideas.

In the third festival concert we commemorate the director Miloš Forman. Listeners can look forward to music from his films, for example Hair, Amadeus, Ragtime, Man on the Moon and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The works are performed by soloists and the Czech National Symphony Orchestra accompanies screenings of these films.

The closing concert is given by the four-member Janoska Ensemble, which has sold out concert halls around the world gaining ovations for their new perspective on classical music which has been terms the Janoska style. This is based on masterly playing with improvisation and elements of jazz and Latin American music. This quartet of Slovak musicians, which is permanently based in Vienna, will be accompanied by the Brno Philharmonic.

Programme:

WEDS 14I8I2019 8 p.m.  ROMANTIC CARNIVAL

Berlioz, Saint-Saëns, Offenbach, Lehár, J. Strauss Jr., Glazunov, Fibich, Smetana, Dvořák, etc.

Soprano Patricia Janečková, Brno Philharmonic, conductor Risto Joost

THURS 15I8I2019 8 p.m. THE KLEZMATICS

The Klezmatics: Richie Barshay, Lorin Sklamberg, Paul Morrissett, Frank London, Lisa Gutkin and Matt Darriau

SUN 18I8I2019 8.30 p.m. CINE-CONCERT I: CONCERT FROM THE FORBIDDEN CITY

  1. Richter: November, S. Rachmaninov: Piano Concerto No. 2, C. Orff: Carmina Burana (Peking 2018)

Mari Samuelsen violin, Daniil Trifonov piano, Aida Garifullina soprano, Toby Spence tenor, Ludovic Tézier baritone, Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, conductor Long Yu

MON 19I8I2019 8.30 p.m. CINE-CONCERT II: JONAS KAUFMANN – “DOLCE VITA”

  1. Puccini, G. Verdi, R. Leoncavallo, N. Rota, L. Dalla, S. Cardillo, D. Modugno, etc. (Waldbühne Berlin 2018)

Jonas Kaufmann tenor, Anita Rachvelishvili mezzosoprano, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, conductor Jochen Rieder

WEDS 21I8I2019 8 p.m. A TRIBUTE TO MILOŠ FORMAN

Music from the films of Miloš Forman: Valmont, Černý Petr, Lásky jedné plavovlásky, Hoří, má panenko, Ragtime, Amadeus, Man on the Moon, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Hair

Jana Sibera soprano , Alžbeta Stanková, Michaela Glagoličová, Tereza Hálová, Viktor Dyk, David Holý vocals, Lukáš Chejn guitar, Marcel Javorček keyboards , Czech National Symphony Orchestra, conductor Kryštof Marek

THURS 22I8I2019 8 p.m.  JANOSKA ENSEMBLE – THE VIENNESE TOUCH

  1. Strauss Jr., Liszt, Kreisler, Saint-Saëns, Tchaikovsky, Bach, Monti, etc.

Janoska Ensemble: Ondrej Jánoška violin, Roman Jánoška violin, Julius Darvas double bass, František Jánoška piano, Brno Philharmonic, conductor Jurek Dybał

The Klezmatics/ photo from the festival archive

Comments

Reply

No comment added yet..

On Saturday, 24 August, the Korean radio orchestra KBS Symphony Orchestra with its musical director - Finnish conductor and violinist Pietari Inkinen - came to Brno's Špilberk Festival with an exclusively romantic repertoire. The invitation was also accepted by South Korean violinist Bomsori Kim, a graduate of the prestigious Julliard School.  more

For a quarter of a century now, the Brno Philharmonic has been organising the Špilberk Festival at the end of August in the courtyard of the castle of the same name. Four open-air musical evenings offer the audience a selection of concerts featuring classical, film and computer music, as well as often jazz and other genres. This makes it a diverse mix of performers and repertoires with an often pleasant, summery, laid-back ambience. This year's big and rapdily sold-out attraction was the Wednesday evening of 21 August, full of melodies from the James Bond films, performed by the Czech National Symphony Orchestra, headed by world-renowned conductor, composer and arranger Steven Mercurio. During the concert, the audience also got to enjoy singers Sara MilfajtováVendula Příhodová and David Krausmore

As part of its European tour, the Taiwanese Taipei Philharmonic Chamber Choir (TPCC), under the direction of artistic director and choirmaster Dr. YuChung Johnny Ku, took the city up on its invitation and visited Brno. The concert was held on Monday, 13th August in the hall of the newly renovated Passage Hotel.  more

The final concert of this year's season of the Brno Philharmonic was devoted to works by Antonín Dvořák and Jean Sibelius at the Janáček Theatre. On Thursday, 20 June, Danish conductor Michael Schønwandt, who had not appeared before a Brno audience since January last year, took the lead of the Philharmonic. In the first half of the programme, the orchestra was accompanied by violinist Alexander Sitkovetskymore

In the spirit of the idea that Brno and folklore belong together, the Folklore Ensemble Happening of the Year took place on Thursday 6 June. The event was organised by the Brno UNESCO City of Music Office in cooperation with the Brno Dances and Sings association. The event thus became part of a long-term project that set out to map the amateur music scene in Brno, and not only folk music. Last year Brno City of Music reached out to choirs in a similar way, and in the future will host garage bands and more. This just goes to prove the diversity of Brno's music scene, not only as regards professional ensembles, but also enthusiastic amateurs for whom music is an inseparable part of their lives.  more