The Easter Festival of Sacred Music will premiere four oratorios by Czech composers. The theme of the 33rd edition is Constancy.
PRESS RELEASE
The traditional musical journey through Brno’s churches is being organized for the 33rd time by the Brno Philharmonic Orchestra’s Easter Festival of Sacred Music. Over two weeks, it will offer six concerts and three tenebraes with a very diverse program. The theme of this year’s festival is Perseverance, which the Apostle Paul mentions when he exhorts believers not to cease in their prayers.
From Sunday, March 29, to Sunday, April 12, the festival will feature several Czech premieres and commissioned compositions. “These are four oratorios by Czech composers, which are connected, although we will present them on two evenings. They set original librettos to music, and we conceive them as two spiritual pauses forming a bridge between the Old and New Testaments,” said festival dramaturge Vladimír Maňas. He added that both evenings are linked by the title Via sancta and will feature compositions by Tomáš Krejčí, Lukáš Hurník, Jiří M. Procházka, and Ondřej Múčka.
Two Czech premieres will be performed at the festival’s opening concert on Palm Sunday, March 29. Fanfares liturgiques by French composer Henri Tomasi captures the Good Friday procession in Seville, followed by Larghetto by contemporary composer James MacMillan, which very impressively sets a penitential psalm to music and is based on his original choral composition Miserere. The Brno Philharmonic Orchestra and the Prague Philharmonic Choir will be joined by soprano Simona Šaturová as soloist to conclude the gala concert with Francis Poulenc’s Stabat mater, one of the most beautiful settings of this medieval sequence, relatively brief but all the more powerful for it.
The following day, Monday, March 30, will feature the traditional organ concert, this time at St. Peter’s Cathedral. Organist Jan Šprta will perform late Romantic compositions with psalm themes. As a bridge between these two serious works, Šprta will include Reger’s transcription of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in C-sharp minor from The Well-Tempered Clavier.
Another Czech premiere will be Tuesday’s performance of the delicate work Exile by Georgian composer Giya Kancheli. “It will be performed in the new church in Lesná, which is very suitable for this composition. This meditative work captures the temporary silence of sacred buildings when no service is being held,” said Marie Kučerová, director of the organizing Brno Philharmonic.
The trio of tenebrae, i.e., concerts in a darkened space lit only by candles, returns this year from the water towers to the church on Jezuitská Street. On Ash Wednesday, the fascinating musical setting of Arvo Pärt’s psalm From the Depths, a selection from Antonín Dvořák’s Biblical Songs, and František Picka’s The Passion of Christ will be performed there. Maundy Thursday belongs to Old Testament oratorios composed on commission for the festival, and Good Friday will bring a selection of Renaissance polyphonies in works by Spanish and Neapolitan composers performed by the international ensemble Ramillete de Tonos, which plays period instruments.
After six concerts during Holy Week, Easter Week will offer three more. On Tuesday, the second part of the diptych Via sancta will premiere New Testament oratorios. Friday, April 10, will bring a discovery in the form of Giovanni Antonio Rigatti’s Festive Vespers. “This composer shone like a meteor in the mid-17th century, but unfortunately faded just as quickly, as he died at the age of 34, at the height of his creative powers,” explained Maňas. The vocal ensemble Societas Incognitorum, accompanied by players on period instruments, will present the Brno premiere of Rigatti’s Solemn Vespers, choral antiphons adapted for performance during Easter week.
The festival will conclude on Sunday, April 12, at St. James’s Church, once again with the Brno Philharmonic Orchestra, this time with the Czech Philharmonic Choir Brno and four soloists. Under the baton of Dutch conductor Jac van Steen, who collaborates with the best European orchestras, three works will be performed. The first is David Matthews’ composition New Fire, which the author wrote on commission for the festival in 2018. The motif of bringing light also permeates the following work by Pavel Zemek Novák, Symphony No. 5 Sources of Light and Mercy in St. James’s Church in Brno. The festival will close with Ludwig van Beethoven’s Mass in C major. “Its rare preserved score was purchased by St. James’s Church shortly after its publication in Vienna, and the mass was played from it for more than a hundred years,” emphasized festival dramaturge Ondřej Múčka.
Listeners can put together their own tailor-made festival, which works on the principle that the more concerts they buy, the greater the discount they receive. Discounts start at 20% for two concerts.
Media contact: Kateřina Konečná, Head of PR and Marketing, Brno Philharmonic Orchestra, +420 775 426 040, katerina.konecna@filharmonie-brno.cz
