Thu 12 Opening concert
The two opening concerts, with Smetana’s My Country performed by the Prague Conservatoire Symphony Orchestra under Jiří Bělohlávek to mark the 200th anniversary of the founding of the Prague Conservatoire, promise to be extraordinary events.
Wed 18 Symfonie tisíců Gustava Mahlera
On the anniversary day of Gustav Mahler’s death, 18 May, a performance of his Symphony No. 8 will be given. Involving about 400 musicians, this monumental work requires a monumental venue. Consequently, for the first time in the history of the Festival, one of its concerts will be held in the multi-purpose O2 Arena.
Fri 19 Michael Tilson Thomas
Regular guests of the Festival, the San Francisco Symphony and their chief conductor, Michael Tilson Thomas, will perform Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, ‘Resurrection’, together with the singers Laura Claycomb and Katarina Karneus and the Czech Philharmonic Choir of Brno.
Út 24 Lisa Batiashvili
Amongst the performances by other stellar ensembles and soloists from abroad, a concert will be given by the New York Philharmonic together with the violinist Lisa Batiashvili, performing, under the direction of Alan Gilbert, Bartók’s Violin Concerto No. 2.
Sat 4 Sir Simon Rattle
In 2011 the Festival will be host to some of the best orchestras in the world, including the outstanding Berliner Philharmoniker. At the closing concert, under the baton of their artistic director, Sir Simon Rattle, they will perform Mahler’s Symphony No. 6.
News and articles
The Prague Spring will celebrate 2011, the Year of Mahler, in grand style. The coming season of the Festival promises to be a show of the best orchestras in the world and Mahler’s ‘unperformable’ Symphony of a Thousand will also be performed.
Yesterday evening the last concert of this year’s Festival took place. This year there were about sixty concerts.
Let’s look back at the highlights of the 65th Prague Spring Festival:
The first half of the concert given by the Hungarian National Philharmonic under the baton of Zoltán Kocsis was entirely in a Hungarian spirit. The orchestra began the evening with Béla Bartók’s Dance Suite. One would be hard pressed to find a composer who had devoted himself more intensively to traditional Hungarian music or who had incorporated it more naturally into his own music. They were later joined by Dezső Ránki at the piano, who gave an almost Impressionist rendition of Bartók’s Piano Concerto No. 3, and the audience responded with great enthusiasm. In the second half of the concert, the audience was treated to the anxiously awaited Symphony No. 1, the Titan, by Gustav Mahler. The Hungarians performed the piece as it was heard at its premiere in Budapest in 1889, conducted by Mahler himself. The final applause at the Prague Spring performance confirmed that this was indeed a very rewarding composition.
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