The Concentus Moraviae International Music Festival celebrates its thirtieth birthday this year. From May to June it will offer its fans almost forty concerts in impressive venues in twenty festival towns and cities. The festival dramaturgy has been prepared by Jelle Dierickx, who has dubbed the whole event "Rondo Festivo". The playful title is a nod to the festive anniversary year as well as this year's artist in residence, French keyboard virtuoso and composer Jean Rondeau.
Concentus Moraviae will blow out thirty candles on the cake in 2025, which really calls for a stylish musical celebration! The artist in residence will be master harpsichordist and pianist Jean Rondeau. The motto of the festival Rondo Festivo refers him, of course, but also highlights the festive character of the year as a whole: not only are we celebrating thirty years of the festival, it's also twenty years since the memorable Flemish Storm blew through Moravia and made its indelible musical mark. The dramaturgy thus combines concerts by Jean Rondeau and his French colleagues with innovative ensembles and musicians from Flanders and the Czech Republic. The 2025 festival, which takes place in some of the most beautiful places of South Moravia, Vysočina and Lower Austria, is structured as a festive rondo: the chorus has a touch of French, while the individual verses are Flemish and Czech. The festival will run from 30 May to 27 June 2025.
Jean Rondeau will be appearing on five nights. At the opening, he will perform Francis Poulenc's Concert champêtre accompanied by the Prague Philharmonia; in the appearances of his residency, he'll perform four of Bach's famous Goldberg Variations with harpsichord, organ, piano and pianino, both as a soloist and as part of Nevermind and UNDR: In addition to Rondeau's colleagues, the great Les Musiciens de Saint-Julien will be the French cherry that tops the birthday cake with works from their album Beauté Barbare.
A long list of Flemish musicians and ensembles will offer up their musical stories. These include a quartet of top vocal ensembles, Vox Luminis, Graindelavoix, Utopia Ensemble and Currende, now in their 50th year, as well as a pair of perhaps the finest Belgian singers of their generation: tenor Reinoud Van Mechelen with his ensemble A Nocte Temporis and soprano Lore Binon with musicians from Het Collectief. The Renaissance ensemble Sollazzo will be performing musical treats from the recently rediscovered Lovan songbook, while Les Violons de Bruxelles will transport the audience to the world of Django Reinhardt. The solo nights will feature living legend Jos Van Immerseel, lutenist Floris De Rycker, and viola da gamba player Thomas Baeté, and pianist Jan Michiels, while guitarist Emma Wills will visit the Lomnica chateau, which has a link to Flanders through the Thienen-Serényi family that owns it. The extraordinary string ensemble Bryggen Bruges Strings headed by violinist Jolente De Maeyer will close the festival this year.
This year, the Flemish partner festival Lunalia, held in Mechelen, will be sending an impressive delegation: in addition to artistic director Jelle Dierickx as dramaturge, Moravia will be hosting Le Pavillon de Musique with flautist Barthold Kuijken, dancer Oona van Aken and organist Tom Van Der Plas, as well as the Zefiro Torna ensemble, which has been a huge hit with Moravian audiences in the past and will be returning to the festival for the third time, this time with a brand new project, Balsam.
Flanders and this country are connected by a programme created especially for the festival by a pair of young percussionists, Geertje Karpez and Anežka Nováková, the Ecce femina project by the popular Tiburtina Ensemble and photographer Lieve Blancquaert, as well as Johannes Tourout's Mirror by the renowned Czech ensemble Cappella Mariana. The programme of the ensemble Rhine, which will be performing at the festival as part of the prestigious S-EEEmerging project, also includes the Baroque Flemish master Nicolaus à Kempis.
Photo by Clement Vayssieres
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