Kutna Hora International Music Festival

7/6 - 13/6 2009

   

Under the auspices
of Mrs Livia Klausová,
wife of the President
of the Czech Republic

Schedule:

Dear Friends,

I am very pleased to be able to invite you to a series of fine concert productions making up the 2nd edition of the Kutná Hora International Music Festival. After the success of last year´s first edition, which was instrumental in anchoring the Festival in the hearts and minds of classical music lovers, I feel confident this year´s programme will not leave you disappointed, either. Indeed, there´s a lot to look forward to. The contents of the nine concerts were once again conceived by the cellist Jiří Bárta, whom I also wish to thank for the professional approach coupled with personal involvement with which he has engaged in the preparation of the Festival´s artistic profile. This year too, the exceptional feature of this event consists in its bringing the various soloists together several days before its opening, for a period of creative warm-up. While in Kutná Hora, you will be meeting artists from various parts of the globe, visiting this town for a whole week with a view to introducing you to the world of chamber music played by some of the best performers around.

I wish you an eventful week with music, in Kutná Hora´s spectacular historical venues.

Alena Turková

Kutná Hora

„Once you realize that the road is the goal and that you are always on the road, not to reach a goal but to enjoy its beauty and wisdom, life ceases to be a task and becomes natural and simple, in itself an ecstasy.“
(Buddhist dictum)

It may not be easy to act according to the above dictum, but we can at least try. „The road as the goal„ could actually serve as the motto for the second edition of the 2009 Kutná Hora International Chamber Music Festival. A concert can become a once-in-a-lifetime experience, but then, the road of preparing for it (through rehearsal and exploration) can be just as thrillingly beautiful. And indeed, a concert alone can never be an end in itself, as the road, the process of seeking, never ends.

Let me invite you now to come and share this wonderful adventure with us… Where will the roads of music lead us, performers and listeners, this year? After last year´s hugely successful Festival, whose dramaturgy was in most of the concerts focused on confronting two composers of two different epochs, we have decided by and large to stick to the model, only occasionally allowing ourselves a greater degree of freedom. We will thus probe into the mysteries of Bach´s cello and violin suites. We will play detectives searching for the meaning of the cryptogram, DSCH, in a trio by Shostakovich and a quartet by Schumann. We will roam along an overgrown path, guided by Leoš Janáček, on our way to the timeless beauty of Bach´s Goldberg Variations. Embarking on a journey of discovery charting the Romantic Roads, we will concentrate this time on music by the Slavic masters, Tchaikovsky and Dvořák. The hard-to-negotiate yet all the more thrilling Modernist Roads will be revealed to us in works from contemporary composers, mostly members of the middle generation. Vladimír Sommer will describe to us his complex lifepath in his epoch-making quartet. Mozart will confess to us through his magnificent oboe quartet and his celebrated clarinet quintet. And the finale? That will be taken care of in a get-together of a trio marking their anniversaries: Haydn, Poe, and Mendelssohn. Come celebrate with us! Why not at the closing jazz soirée at the local basic art school.

Yours truly, Jiri Barta

Artists: