Classical Music

News

Johann Sebastian Bach as a ground-breaking composer and the composers who were inspired by his work are the subject of the concert Schnittke 90 & Bach, to be played by the Brno Philharmonic on Thursday and Friday, opening another subscription series. The concerts will be conducted by Robert Kružík at the Besední dům.  more

The concert is dedicated to the memory of the forty children drowned during World War II on Mendlovo náměstí (20 November 1944). The concert will feature the world premières of two commissioned compositions, Adagio for Orchestra by Adrián Demoč and the meditative Exercise of Breath and Spirit by Pavel Zlámal. Clarinettist Marek Švejkar will perform the Czech première of Domaines by Pierre Boulez and the final performance will be the somewhat atypical Actions by Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki.  more

The Brno Philharmonic has announced a new date for Pavel Černoch's concert, as a substitute for his summer concert at Špilberk that was brought to an end by a storm. The concert is scheduled for May 2025.  more

Due to an injury, the Staatskapelle Berlin will not be led by its chief conductor Christian Thielemann at the festival concert. Standing in for him will be conductor Jakub Hrůša, who has already performed with his Bamberg Symphonies at the Janáček Brno Festival this year.  more

This year's 35th annual Prague Cantat international choir competition also featured the Brno choir Gloria Brunensis, which won first place in the Women's Choir category and a special prize for its performance of Der Wassermannmore

The Faculty of Music of the Janáček Academy of Performing Arts (JAMU) organises the prestigious International Leoš Janáček Competition in Brno every year. This year marks the 30th anniversary of the flute and clarinet competition. The final rounds of the competition in both disciplines will take place at the Besední dům, where the competitors will be accompanied by the Czech Virtuosi orchestra conducted by Vít Spilka and the Ensemble Opera Diversa orchestra conducted by Gabriela Tardonová.  more

The Brno Philharmonic will embark on its 69th season this Sunday. With this concert, principal conductor Dennis Russell Davies will begin his seventh year at the helm of the orchestra. The programme commemorates the anniversaries of two giants of the Romantic era: the founder of Czech national music, Bedřich Smetana, and the prominent Austrian symphonist Anton Bruckner, born 200 years ago this year.  more

Peter Berger has been nominated for a Thalia Award for performing the role of Dalibor in the production of Smetana's opera Dalibor, directed by David Pountney and scored by Tomáš Hanus.  more

Czech Ensemble Baroque opens the 13th season of its "Bacha na Mozarta!” subscription series in Brno. The dramatic highlight of the season will be the performance of Antonio Vivaldi's only surviving oratorio, Judith Triumphans, with mezzo-soprano Dagmar Šašková and Swedish singing star Malena Ernman in the lead roles. Eight more subscription concerts will follow.  more

The National Theatre Brno will open its 2024/2025 season this Thursday. The concert on the piazzetta in front of the Janáček Theatre will feature the NdB Janáček Opera’s soloists, choir and orchestra led by chief conductor Marko Ivanović. Actors from the NdB drama troupe will also be performing, singing songs from the productions. The evening will be hosted by Jana Štvrtecká and Petr Bláha from the NdB Drama Theatre.  more

Feature articles

On Saturday, 24 August, the Korean radio orchestra KBS Symphony Orchestra with its musical director - Finnish conductor and violinist Pietari Inkinen - came to Brno's Špilberk Festival with an exclusively romantic repertoire. The invitation was also accepted by South Korean violinist Bomsori Kim, a graduate of the prestigious Julliard School. more

For a quarter of a century now, the Brno Philharmonic has been organising the Špilberk Festival at the end of August in the courtyard of the castle of the same name. Four open-air musical evenings offer the audience a selection of concerts featuring classical, film and computer music, as well as often jazz and other genres. This makes it a diverse mix of performers and repertoires with an often pleasant, summery, laid-back ambience. This year's big and rapdily sold-out attraction was the Wednesday evening of 21 August, full of melodies from the James Bond films, performed by the Czech National Symphony Orchestra, headed by world-renowned conductor, composer and arranger Steven Mercurio. During the concert, the audience also got to enjoy singers Sara MilfajtováVendula Příhodová and David Krausmore

As part of its European tour, the Taiwanese Taipei Philharmonic Chamber Choir (TPCC), under the direction of artistic director and choirmaster Dr. YuChung Johnny Ku, took the city up on its invitation and visited Brno. The concert was held on Monday, 13th August in the hall of the newly renovated Passage Hotel.  more

The final concert of this year's season of the Brno Philharmonic was devoted to works by Antonín Dvořák and Jean Sibelius at the Janáček Theatre. On Thursday, 20 June, Danish conductor Michael Schønwandt, who had not appeared before a Brno audience since January last year, took the lead of the Philharmonic. In the first half of the programme, the orchestra was accompanied by violinist Alexander Sitkovetskymore

A year ago we would have found an Asian market in the New Synagogue in Velké Meziříčí. However, the town decided to buy the building and has started to make more fitting and dignified use of it. On Wednesday 5 June, during the ongoing Concentus Moraviae festival, audiences could visit this heritage site and enjoy a chamber concert by singer and violinist Iva Bittová and her women's choir Babačka, featuring musicians Jakub Jedlinský (accordion) and Pavel Fischer (violin).  more

The evening concert by Ensemble Opera Diversa entitled The Face of Water, which took place on 4 June outdoors in the atrium of the Moravian Library in Brno, was preceded by a morning discussion between Professor Miloš Štědron and Associate Professor Vladimír Maňas from the Institute of Musicology at Masaryk University. They both enjoyed an engaging talk on the theme of water in art (from Gregorian chant to the early 20th century), concluding with a sample of the edition and the playing of a recording of Janáček's symphony The Danube. The concert, conducted by Gabriela Tardonová and inspired by the theme of water, featured one world and three Czech premières. Harpist Dominika Kvardová appeared as a soloist.  more

Like other music festivals, the 29th annual Concentus Moraviae International Music Festival has not only had to reflect the fact that it is the Year of Czech Music, but also the unique 200th anniversary of the birth of Bedřich Smetana, the founder of modern Czech music. The dramaturgy of this year’s festival, which has just launched, is in the spirit of "Metamorphoses: Czech Smetana!". The first festival concert, which took place on 31 May at the Kyjov Municipal Cultural Centre, gave a hint of the direction the rest of the festival's dramaturgy will take. The organisers of the show decided to explore Smetana's work from a fresh angle and to work not only with the music, but also with the audience’s expectations. The opening evening saw a performance of Smetana's famous String Quartet No. 1 in E minor From My Life, but in an arrangement for a symphony orchestra penned by conductor and pianist George Szell. Smetana's work was complemented by the world première of the Concerto for Flute and Orchestra "Sadunkertoja" by Finnish composer, conductor and artist in residence at the 29th annual festival, Olli Mustonen, commissioned especially for the festival. Mustonen also conducted the Prague Philharmonia's performance of the two works. Danish flautist Janne Thomsen performed as soloist.  more

As part of Ensemble Opera Diversa's Musical Inventory series of concerts, which began back in 2017, the ensemble aims to present (re)discovered works and composers that we rarely hear on stage. However, this dramaturgical line also offers the space and initiative to create some completely new works performed in world premières. This time, the chamber concert held on Wednesday, 29 May 2024 in the auditorium of the Rector's Office of the Brno University of Technology (BUT) was directed by the Diversa QuartetBarbara Tolarová (1st violin), Jan Bělohlávek (2nd violin), David Křivský (viola), Iva Wiesnerová (cello), OK Percussion Duo (Martin OpršálMartin Kneibl), soloists Aneta Podracká Bendová (soprano) and pianist Tereza Plešáková. The theme was a nod to the Prague composition school from a pedagogical and artistic perspective.  more

The concert with the subtitle Haydn and Shostakovich in G Minor closed the Philharmonia at Home subscription series on Thursday 16 May at the Besední dům. It was also the last concert of the 2023/24 season (not counting Friday's reprise), with the Brno Philharmonic led by its chief conductor Dennis Russell Davies. In the second half of the evening the orchestra was accompanied by singers Jana Šrejma Kačírková (soprano) and Jiří Služenko (bass). As the title of the concert implies, the dramaturgy juxtaposed works by Joseph Haydn and Dimitri Shostakovich, which are almost exclusively linked only by the key in which they were written.  more

Connection, unity, contemplation - these words can be used to describe the musical evening of Schola Gregoriana Pragensis under the direction of David Eben and organist Tomáš Thon, which took place yesterday as part of the Easter Festival of Sacred Music at the church of St. Thomas. Not only the singing of a Gregorian chant, but also the works of composer Petr Eben (1929-2007) enlivened the church space with sound and colour for an hour.  more


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Upcoming events

Magical tones of Christmas

10/12/24, 19:00 / Vila Löw-Beer

A pre-Christmas concert from the Chamber Guitar cycle organized by the Czech Guitar Society. Jaroslav Svěcený (violin), Vladislav Bláha (guitar), Viera Gulázsi Maňásková (vocals) and Tania Drobysh (domra) will perform as part of the concert. The program includes compositions by G. Caccini, G. F. Händel, G. Rossini, N. Paganini, F. Schubert, J. Rodrigo, A. Piazzolla, etc.

Messiah

12/12/24, 19:00 / Janáčkovo divadlo (Janáček Theatre)

CHAMBER FAMILY AFTERNOON: CHRISTMAS TUNING

14/12/24, 14:00 / Besední dům Concert Hall

CHRISTMAS MATINE OF THE PREPARATORY DEPARTMENT OF CANTILÉNA

15/12/24, 10:30 / Besední dům Concert Hall

Jakub Jan Ryba I Czech and Moravian Christmas Mass

15/12/24, 17:00 / Janáčkovo divadlo (Janáček Theatre)

Ensemble Opera Diversa: Da Pacem, Domine

15/12/24, 19:00 / Old City Hall - Fresco Hall

With its program, this year's concert by the string quartet Diversa Quartet continues the years-old initiative of the ensemble operation to realize evenings in memory of all the faithful deceased, i.e. with a soul theme. Although delayed in terms, the dramaturgical concept itself is not strictly liturgical, but rather wreathed in the theme of sadness and commemorative dedications, aiming at a conciliatory catharsis. The title of the concert with three Czech premieres is based on the composition of the same name by Arvo Pärt, which will be heard at the very end of the evening.



Listening Guide: Leoš Janáček's Sinfonietta
with Jakub Hrůša
  more