Prague Spring Music Festival

The 70th-annual Prague Spring Music Festival will be welcoming a number of outstanding artists from Scandinavia – so outstanding that making their acquaintance is worthwhile. Don’t miss the chance to see and hear them live in Prague.

The 70th-annual Prague Spring Music Festival will be welcoming a number of outstanding artists from Scandinavia – so outstanding that making their acquaintance is worthwhile. Don’t miss the chance to see and hear them live in Prague.

Pietari Inkinen

His recordings are amazing for their sophistication, depth, and extraordinarily interesting musical approach. The Finnish conductor Pietari Inkinen is a man of many musical talents. In 2014 he won the Helpmann Award for his performance of Wagner’ tetralogy Der Ring des Nibelungen and the Franco Abbiati Prize for his Rheingold. An outstanding symphonic conductor, he has collaborated with the Munich Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Israel Philharmonic, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and the Leipzig Gewandhausorchester. He has also been successful in the world of ballet music. He is an excellent violinist and a member of the Inkinen Trio, with which he has given concerts in London’s famed Wigmore Hall.

At Prague Spring, he will be performing one of the most revelatory programmes at this 70th-annual festival. Following dramatic music by Jan Hanuš that is evocative of film, in which you will hear an electronic instrument called an ondes Martenot, you will be surrounded by the fascinating, all-embracing cosmic sounds of Einojuhani Rautavaara. The programme will then conclude with one of Mahler’s most beautiful symphonies.

Thursday, 21 May at 8 p.m., Prague, Municipal House
Details about the concert

Vilde Frang

According to the British newspaper The Guardian, “Frang is clearly a new star in the violin firmament.” It is no coincidence that the youthful Vilde won the Classic BRIT Award for the Best Newcomer for her debut with the EMI Classic label in 2010. Today, this Norwegian violinist is clearly one of the most brilliant talents of her generation.

She studied in Oslo and Hamburg, then continued her education at the famed Kronberg Academy in the studio of the outstanding pedagogue Ana Chumachenco, whose pupils have included Julia Fischer. At the age of twelve, she made her debut with the Oslo Philharmonic under the baton of Mariss Jansons. She was subsequently invited to London’s famed Royal Festival Hall and Wigmore Hall. At Prague Spring, the boisterous, lively violinist Vilde Frang together with the Czech Philharmonic will be performing Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s enchanting Violin Concerto in D Major with its brilliantly virtuosic final movement.

Saturday, 30 May at 8 p.m., Prague, Municipal House
Details about the concert

Jukka-Pekka Saraste

According to the German newspaper Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger: “Everything he tackles is a success … regardless of whether it is Beethoven, Brahms, Schönberg or Stravinsky.” Jukka-Pekka Saraste, a conductor of Finnish origin, brings to the podium the same things that da Vinci, Dürer or in the 20th century Amedeo Modigliani brought to the visual arts: mystery, an inexhaustible quantity of interpretations, and above all, dozens of stories hidden behind the musical images that he creates.

He began his musical career as a violinist, and he studied conducting at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. The year of his breakthrough was 1987, when he became the principal conductor of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra. Since then, he has collaborated with orchestras including the London Philharmonic, the Munich Philharmonic, the Royal Concertgebouw, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. Since 2010 he has been at the helm of the WDR Symphony Orchestra in Cologne. For his artistic activities, he has won a number of awards: the Pro Finlandia Medal, the Sibelius Medal, the Finnish State Award, and honorary doctorates from the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki and at York University in Toronto.

Saturday, 30 May at 8 p.m., Prague, Municipal House
Details about the concert

Lisa Larsson

The résumé of the Swedish soprano Lisa Larsson is adorned with performances on great operatic stages (the Bavarian State Opera, the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, and the Teatro alla Scala in Milan), at the Salzburg, Lucerne, and Glyndebourne festivals, concerts with the Berlin Philharmonic, the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, and much more. She has collaborated with Riccardo Muti, Franz Welser-Möst, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, and many other star conductors.

It is not by chance that Vasily Petrenko has chosen her voice for Alban Berg’s Seven Early Songs, which he will be accompanying with his Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. Musically, these songs are very far removed from Berg’s later works like Lulu or Wozzeck. The roots of this music are in late Romanticism, ingeniously enhanced by the composer’s extraordinarily beautiful and peculiar harmonic procedures and sonorities. Thanks to her excellent technique, her transparent, relaxed high range, and her power of expression, Lisa Larsson is the ideal performer for these songs.

Tuesday, 2 June at 8 p.m., Prague, Municipal House
Details about the Concert

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