Chamber Music Festival Český Krumlov

 27 June - 5 July 2014

Baroque Night will again open the 28^th Chamber Music Festival Český Krumlov. Many artists will return to perform on the Night including Jiří Stivín. There will also be several ensembles performing entertainment and dancing music of the past centuries: Alla Danza, Ludus musicus, Histriones Pragensis and Krumlov Pipers. The highlight of the event will be the opera Armida by Giuseppe Scarlatti performed by Musica Florea under Marek Štryncl. Also performing will be the dance ensemble Hartig with artistic director Helena Kazárová. Baroque Night will take place on two occasions, on Friday 27 and Saturday 28 June.

Musical schedule of events will take you to non-traditional locations. Bohemian music features prominently in the Festival year ending with a four. The Schwarzenberg Guard Jazzband will perform in the open air on the Svornosti Square on Sunday 29 June before noon. This special concert pays tribute to a musical ensemble which used to be active in this region from the end of 19^th century until the end of World War II. The band repertoire is exclusively based on its musical archive kept in the Krumlov Castle library. Sunday evening takes the Festival to the Synagogue where Musica divina will perform starting with chants from ancient hymn-books and through pieces by Bohuslav Martinů and Zdeněk Lukáš will proceed to folk songs.

The Schwarzenberg Guard Jazzband will perform again on the terrace of Hotel Růže on Tuesday 1 July. The series of classical concerts in the Mirrored Hall of the Český Krumlov Castle commences on Wednesday 2 July with the concert of violinist Jan Fišer and pianist Ivo Kahánek. The programme pays homage to Bohemian music: it includes the popular Sonatina by Antonín Dvořák, The Violin Sonata by Leoš Janáček and the Concert Etude for Piano C dur by Bedřich Smetana. Thursday 3 July will see a splendid romantic programme for viola and piano. The excellent Czech violist Ms. Viola Hosprová will perform Brahms´ Viola Sonata f moll  as well as two transcripts of pieces originally composed for the violin: Three Romances by Clara Schumann and the A dur Sonata by César Franck. Both concerts will have excellent pianists perform matching the qualities of the violinist and the violinist.

There are 2 concerts scheduled for Friday 4 July. First concert will be dedicated to Rudolphine Prague music, i.e. period of late renaissance and mannerism. Octopus Pragensis ensemble will perform pieces by composers from the imperial band of Rudolph II, and selected madrigals by Claudio Monteverdi - the greatest European composer of this period. This early evening concert takes place in the Mirrored Hall and will be followed by an evening piano recital of the remarkable German pianist Olga Scheps. The romantically tuned programme will include pieces by Franz Schubert and infrequently played cycle Seasons of the Year by Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky.

The Schwarzenberg Guard Jazzband will perform again on Svornosti Square on the last Festival day on Saturday 5 July before noon. There will be two more concerts on the day: first the joint organ and vocal recital of Drahomíra Matznerová and mezzosoprano Barbora Polášková. It will take place in the attractive and rarely used space of St. Martin Chapel in the Municipal Park and will offer a varied selection of arias from works of Gioacchino Rossini, Joseph Haydn and Petr Eben. The final concert will be by the South Bohemian Chamber Philharmonics in a programme linking the world of classical, popular and jazz music. They will perform Beethoven's piano concert Nr. 3 c moll with the soloist Jan Simon and ten Beatles songs adapted for the piano and string orchestra by the multi-talented jazzman and composer Milan Svoboda who will also play the piano after the break.

DETAILED SCHEDULE