Berliner Philharmoniker to open this year’s Prague Spring music festival
The 79th edition of the Prague Spring International Music Festival, the largest and oldest classical musical festival in Czechia, gets underway in the Czech capital next Sunday with a performance of Bedřich Smetana’s My Country by the Berliner Philharmoniker, conducted by Kirill Petrenko.
The festival, which will celebrate the Year of Czech Music and the bicentenary of the birth of Bedřich Smetana, will offer dozens of concerts by symphony orchestras and other ensembles including two of Italy’s finest orchestras - the National Academy of Santa Cecilia and La Scala Philharmonic Orchestra of the Milan Opera.
Among the many highlights will be a concert at the Rudolfinum on May 17 featuring music by Italian masters of the Renaissance and Baroque performed by Phillip Herreweghe, known for his authentic performances of historic music, with the Collegio Vocale Gent.
On 27 May, the Philharmonic Orchestra of Radio France under the baton of Mikko Franck will perform works by the musical impressionist Maurice Ravel at the Rudolfinum, as well as the world premiere of Kryštof Mařatka‘s violin concerto inspired by prehistoric cave paintings.
A new addition to the festival will be a day-long programme for young audiences called SpringTEEN , a spectacular concert with fifty pianos sounding simultaneously at the Karlín Forum and the site-specific project Pianofonia by Michal Rataj and Jan Trojan at the National Technical Museum
The traditional opening concert, Bedřich Smetana‘s Má Vlast, will be screened live to the public at Prague’s Kampa park. And you can listen to an excerpt of the famous Symphonic Cycle of Poems now, in a performance by Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Vladimír Válek.
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