Barbara Hannigan, Sir Simon Rattle and composer Unsuk Chin among highlights of Prague Spring 2026
The biggest classical music festival in Czechia gets underway on Tuesday as the 81st edition of the Prague Spring International Music Festival opens with Bedřich Smetana’s Má vlast, performed this year by the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra. This year’s line-up features leading international orchestras and soloists alongside contemporary music events under the Prague Offspring banner. I spoke to the festival’s artistic director Josef Třeštík about this year’s highlights, Artist-in-Residence Barbara Hannigan, and why contemporary music remains an important part of Prague Spring.
This year's Artist-in-Residence at the Prague Spring International Music Festival is the Canadian soprano and conductor Barbara Hannigan. I know you've been hoping to bring her to the festival ever since you joined the Prague Spring team. Why did it take such a long time?
“Well, some dreams take time to realise. In classical music in general, especially at that level, planning happens years in advance. Even though this year’s edition is about to start, next year’s programme is already finished, the 2028 edition is half-finished, and so on. So there is always a long planning process involved.
“The biggest stars are, of course, very busy, and we can only offer them about three or three-and-a-half weeks in May, so it doesn’t always work out. But in this case, once we found suitable dates, everything became very easy.
“What also helped was the artistic board of the Prague Spring Festival, which includes excellent musicians such as Jakub Hrůša and Miroslav Srnka. They both knew her quite well. She was also on the jury of the Gustav Mahler Conducting Competition in Bamberg, where Jakub Hrůša is chief conductor, artistic director and head of the jury. He kindly invited me there and introduced me to her. From that point on, planning the residency became a really pleasant and easy experience.”
Why did you want to bring her so much? What makes her such a special artist?
“She really is an extraordinary artist. I think she is almost criminally unknown in the Czech Republic in terms of performances. If I’m correct, she has only performed in Prague once before.
“With the Artist-in-Residence programme, we always look for someone truly special who can offer audiences something they would not normally experience. Prague already has a rich concert season, with excellent orchestras and outstanding guest artists, so we try to bring in someone who can add real variety during a short period of time and Barbara Hannigan is exactly that.
“She is both a singer and a conductor, and she performs at the very highest level in both roles. What makes her especially unique is that she combines these two roles. In two concerts with the Czech Philharmonic, she will be singing and conducting at the same time, which is really something special. I don’t think Czech audiences have had the chance to experience anything quite like that before.
“She is also bringing excellent musical partners with her. One is French pianist Bertrand Chamayou, with whom she will perform music by Olivier Messiaen, as well as a challenging work by contemporary American composer and jazz musician John Zorn.
“She will also perform with the Belcea Quartet, one of the world’s leading string quartets today. Their programme combines works by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Paul Hindemith, Anton Webern and Arnold Schoenberg.
“One of the concerts with the Czech Philharmonic, the final one of the residency, will end on a lighter note, with a suite from George Gershwin’s musical Girl Crazy. But perhaps the most striking concert will be the performance of Francis Poulenc and Jean Cocteau’s La Voix humaine (The Human Voice).
“Under normal circumstances, this is an opera for a single singer, with an orchestra in the pit and a separate conductor. But in this production, all of those roles are combined. She will be on stage singing the main role while simultaneously conducting the Czech Philharmonic.
“There is also a strong theatrical element. Several cameras will film her live and project her image above the orchestra. So she will be singing, conducting and also acting, all at the same time!”
The festival opens on Tuesday, traditionally with Smetana’s Má vlast. But the celebrations actually begin earlier that day with an open-air concert at Riegrovy sady, not far from the Czech Radio building. What will audiences be able to hear there?
“For many years, Prague Spring organised live broadcasts of the opening concert in a park. It used to take place at Kampa, but this year we decided to move to Riegrovy sady and create a special programme leading up to the live broadcast of the opening concert.
“We start at three o’clock with a programme for children and families called Vlnohraní, organised in collaboration with Czech Radio. Then there will be a percussion show for children, which I think will be great fun.
“After that comes a concert by the Chamber Orchestra of the Czech Philharmonic together with the young violinist Jan Novák, who is a laureate of the Prague Spring Competition. He recently won second prize and will perform Antonio Vivaldi’s Spring from The Four Seasons. The orchestra will also play Dvořák’s Serenade.
“There will also be a live version of the famous Czech television quiz show AZ-kvíz, with a musical theme. Some well-known figures from the classical music world will take part, including bass-baritone Adam Plachetka and Robert Jindra, music director of the opera at the National Theatre.
“And then, of course, there will be the live broadcast and screening of the opening concert itself.”
Looking beyond the opening concert and the Artist-in-Residence programme, what would you say are some of the other major highlights of this year’s programme?
“One major highlight will certainly be the two concerts by the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra with their chief conductor Simon Rattle. In one of those concerts, the soloist will be mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kožená, who will sing the Czech premiere of a major work by Czech composer Ondřej Adámek called Where Are You?
“I am also very much looking forward to a concert by the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra with conductor Lahav Shani. Another highlight will be a recital by American pianist Eric Lu, who last year won the International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw. We wanted to bring him to the festival as quickly as possible after his success.
“There will also be performances by Ensemble Modern, one of the world’s leading ensembles specialising in contemporary music, together with conductor Ilan Volkov. They will present five world premieres commissioned from Czech and Slovak composers.
“At the same time, Korean composer Unsuk Chin will appear as composer-in-residence. There are so many concerts that it is always difficult for me to choose only a few highlights!”
Unsuk Chin is also part of Prague Offspring, the showcase dedicated to contemporary music. What are some of the highlights of this year’s Offspring programme?
“Prague Offspring is a two-day programme that always takes place on Friday and Saturday. This year is already its fifth edition. For the first three years, the ensemble-in-residence was Klangforum Wien, and this year it is the second collaboration with Ensemble Modern.
“The idea behind Prague Offspring is to bring the very best musicians specialising in contemporary music to Prague, while also connecting the Czech contemporary music scene with the international one.
“As I mentioned, we commissioned five new works, all of which will receive their premieres. Some of them are quite substantial pieces. For example, Czech composer Michal Nejtek wrote a composition lasting around 30 minutes.
“There will also be workshops for students organised in cooperation with the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague and the Janáček Academy in Brno. Three composition students were selected to write short pieces, which Ensemble Modern and the conductor will rehearse publicly while also giving feedback to the young composers.
“In addition, members of the ensemble will teach students how to perform contemporary music, and there will also be public interviews, such as the pre-concert talk with Unsuk Chin, and others. All of this will take place at Prague’s Centre for Contemporary Art, DOX Centre for Contemporary Art.”
For listeners thinking about coming to the Prague Spring festival, are there still tickets available?
“Some concerts are already sold out — sadly, but happily for us — but there are still tickets available for a number of performances, so people should definitely check our website. Some returned tickets may also appear later, so there is always hope.”
And for those who cannot attend in person, there will also be broadcasts?
“Yes. The opening concert will be broadcast live by Czech Television as well as by Czech Radio Vltava. But several other concerts will also be broadcast by Czech Radio, most of them live and some recorded for later transmission.”
And if I’m not mistaken, the broadcasts will also be available through Czech Centres around the world?
“Exactly. We have started a new collaboration with the Czech Centres, which will help bring the concerts to audiences worldwide, from Tokyo to Vienna to New York. So we are really looking forward to that.”
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