The Olomouc Baroque Festival will offer a program full of music from the Baroque to early Romantic. It includes 11 unique projects that will take place throughout Olomouc. The festival will also visit the pilgrimage church in Dub nad Moravou. The festival’s resident ensemble this year is the Volantes Orchestra. Musica Figuralis, Societas Incognitorum, Musica Florea, Arte dei Suonatori, and others will also perform.
The highlight of this year’s program is the Beethoven Friendship Concert which will feature works by Ludwig van Beethoven – Piano Concerto No. 5 in E flat major, Op. 73, the so-called “Emperor Concerto” and Pavel Vranitzky’s Symphony in C major, Op. 33, No. 2 “Siri Brahe”. This unique concerto will be performed by the Volantes Orchestra with Polish soloist Dominika Maszczyńska, who performs on historical keyboard instruments, and world-renowned conductor Jos van Immerseel, a specialist in historically informed interpretation. The festival will run from 21 July to 3 September 2022.
The opera “Dráteník” from the pen of František Škroup, author of the Czech national anthem, is the only theatrical performance to be performed during the festival. The first ever Czech opera, our national treasure, will be performed in Olomouc after 64 years. Back then it was performed on the stage of the Moravian Theatre Olomouc. At our festival we will present the opera in a restored premiere based on the autograph original. Matúš Šimko, a renowned Slovak tenor, will play the role of the tinker, while other roles will be played by Lenka Cafourková Ďuricová (Růžena), Vincenc Ignác Novotný (Vojtěch), Zuzana Badárová (Liduška), Aleš Janiga (Květenský), Jiří Miroslav Procházka (Lána), Martin Vodrážka (Kůl), and Martin Mihál (Hranatý/Chmelenský). Sylva Marková is the author of the set and costumes, Marek Čermák will set the opera to music and, as conductor, will lead both the singers and the musicians of the Volantes Orchestra. Dráteník will be directed by Kateřina Křivánková.
This year, the organizers will continue along the lines they set in 2021. The Polish ensemble Arte dei Suonatori, in collaboration with pianist Katarzyna Drogosz, will open this year’s jubilee edition and thus support the celebrations of the city of Olomouc associated with the Czech-Polish Year. The concert will feature Serenade No. 13 in G major, KV 525 of A Little Night Music and Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, KV 466 (in a period arrangement by Ignaz Lachner) by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. There will also be Polish works by the early Romantic composer and piano virtuoso Maria Szymanowska.
Other chamber concerts include one of Johann Sebastian Bach’s masterpieces, the Goldberg Variations, performed by harpsichordist Jaroslav Tůma in the Rotunda of the Cyril and Methodius Theological Faculty of the Palacký University. In the representative Ceremonial Hall of the Olomouc Archbishopric, flute concertos and symphonies by the Olomouc Cathedral Kapellmeister Anton Neumann will be performed. The works will be performed under the direction of Marek Čermák by the ensemble Musica Figuralis and soloist Jana Semerádová. The works of Czech and Slovak classics by Karel Kohaut, Jan Ladislav Dusík, and Johann Nepomuk Hummel will be performed by Musica Florea together with pianist Petra Matějová in the reconstructed Fresco Hall of the Komenium Primary School.
The architectural gems of Olomouc are mostly church buildings. In St. Wenceslas Cathedral, the modern premiere of the Requiem Mass in C minor and other sacred compositions by Joseph Puschmann will be performed by the Musica Figuralis ensemble. In the Church of Our Lady of the Snows, the oratorio Triumph of Time and Truth by Georg Friedrich Händel will be performed by the students and teachers of the Summer School of Early Music and the Czech Ensemble Baroque under the direction of Roman and Tereza Válek. The musically unique Solemn Vespers from the pen of one of the greatest Italian composers Giovanni Antonio Rigatti will be performed by artistic director Eduard Tomaštík and his ensemble Societas Incognitorum in the pilgrimage church of the Purification of the Virgin Mary in Dub nad Moravou. This is a type of large celebratory vespers, with a large vocal and instrumental apparatus for its time. The program is a fine example of Italian early baroque sacred music, following the legacy of Claudio Monteverdi.
Talentum concerts provide opportunities for emerging artists to perform. In this year’s program, the flute player Johana Chlupáčová, a pupil of the renowned recorder artist Jakub Kydlíček, will perform in the Chapel of Corpus Christi at the Palacký University Art Centre, accompanied by harpsichordist Maxmilián Pilmaier. The students of the Summer School of Baroque Music are already a regular participant of the festival and will perform the already mentioned oratorio Triumph of Time and Truth. The last Talentum concert closes with young organists who will complete their musical experience thanks to intensive courses under the direction of Jaroslav Tůma at the Church of Our Lady of the Snows.
No comment added yet..