Prague Spring

Private guide in Prague

I´d like to tell you about an important and spectacular Festival of music that takes place in Prague. I had the great opportunity to assist to more than one edition and I can assure you that for the quality of the music and the interpretation, it always was valuable.

History

In 1946 celebrated Prague and the whole Czechoslovak Republic is the first anniversary of the end of war, born simultaneously with the 50th anniversary of the Czech Philharmonic International Music Festival Prague Spring.

In addition to Czech music and its national classics (Bedrich Smetana, Antonin Dvorak, Leos Janacek and Bohuslav Martinů) put the first festival years inevitably focus on the music and the representatives of the four victorious powers the anti-Hitler coalition. Along with artists from the United States of America (the Prague Spring Festival in 1946 and 1947 made ​​his international debut at the renowned conductor Leonard Bernstein), Great Britain and France with the festival since its inception also attended by top soloists, singers and conductors from the former Soviet Union .

The most famous conductors and composers

Decorated with an eye-catching range of artists who performed at the Prague Springs, form composers Leonard Bernstein, Arthur Honegger, Paul Hindemith, Darius Milhaud, Pierre Boulez and Hans Werner Henze and conductors Karel Ančerl, Claudio Abbado, Sir Adrian Boult, Herbert von Karajan, Lorin Maazel , Kurt Masur, Evgeny Mravinsky, Charles Munch, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Leopold Stokowski.

Prague spring

71. international music festival 7/5 – 5/6 2016

Kristina Fialová

The first matinee on 16th May will introduce the viola player, Kristina Fialová. Currently she still studies the Music Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts and the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen but she has already managed to tour most European countries with her viola and she has also performed in the USA and Africa. She performed at the festivals in Bergen, Santander and, as the first Czech viola player ever to do so, at the famous Tivoli Festival in Copenhagen. She records for Arco Diva and for the Danish DACAPO. “Kristina is a violist with a fiery temperament, natural virtuosity and a heartful tune. She is one of the most talented violists of the young generation,” Lars Andres Tomter wrote about her.

For her Prague Spring Debut she chose two musical opposites: Baroque and the 20th century music – Zdeněk Lukáš, Krzysztof Penderecki and Jiří Teml. “The beauty of life stands or falls with contrasts,” says Kristina Fialová. "For that reason I came up with, at first sight, a brave dramaturgy. I love Bach, that’s the very start of everything. Contemporary music allows us to look into new sound possibilities for instruments. For me, this music is as substantiv as that of Bach,” the young violist continues. “What’s very interesting about performing contemporary music is the fact that I can be in direct contact with a living author, as I had this fortunate opportunity with Krzysztof Penderecki and Jiří Teml,” closes Kristina Fialová.

SA CHEN

Effortless pianism on the fingers may be commonplace these days, but it is the heart and soul of an artist that make live recitals such as this one well worth attending.” (The Straits Times)¨

As part of her debut performance at Prague Spring, the pianist Sa Chen will be presenting herself playing repertoire consisting of gems of the world’s piano literature. Besides a selection from Chopin’s Mazurkas, this laureate of the Chopin International Piano Competition in Warsaw will be playing the Prelude, Chorale, and Fugue by César Franck, a work inspired by the legacy of J. S. Bach, whose music Franck, as an organist himself, admired. Also to be heard on the programme is Debussy’s Suite bergamasque. Its fourth part, the famed Clair de Lune, for which Debussy found inspiration in a poem of the same title by Paul Verlaine, has become famous even far beyond the frontiers of classical music. At the conclusion of the recital, we shall hear Schumann’s Carnaval Op. 9, in which the composer develops a theme based on the notes A-Es-C-H (a, e-flat, c, b natural) derived from the birthplace of his first love, Ernestine von Fricken (the Bohemian town Aš is named Asch in German). The names of the individual parts of the cycle refer to real figures in Schumann’s life, and besides Chopin, we can also hear a depiction brimming with emotion of ‘Chiarina’ or Clara Wieck, who was later to become Schumann’s wife.

The Chinese pianist Sa Chen graduated from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London under the guidance of Joan Havill. She is the only woman in history to win prizes at all three of the world’s most prestigious piano competitions (the Chopin International Piano Competition in Warsaw, the Leeds International Piano Competition, and the Van Cliburn Piano Competition in Fort Worth, USA), and she has earned recognition as a performer of the piano music of Frédéric Chopin. In 2010, the government of Poland honored her with a “Chopin Arts Passport” for her activities as part of the 200th anniversary of the composer’s birth.

Official website : http://www.festival.cz/

Visit Prague with private  guide http://www.visita-praga.eu/