You don’t really need much of an excuse to go to Prague in springtime. The loveliness of the parks, the variegated architecture of the squares, the calm of the mighty Vltava river, the congenial atmosphere and quality of food and wine (and beer!) should be enough to tempt anyone. But just in case, the 2017 Prague Spring Festival throws in an aural banquet to tempt the palate of any classical music lover.
After the amuse-bouche of an Informal Festival Prelude on May 11th, where we’re promised the unexpected, defying of tradition and flouting of dress code, formal proceedings start with two of the very biggest international names: Daniel Barenboim and the Vienna Philharmonic will play that most famous of all hymns to the Czech homeland: Smetana’s Má vlast.
There’s more Czech music during the festival’s three weeks, ranging from the familiar (Dvořák, Smetana) to composers of various eras known to the cognoscenti (Zelenka, Martinů, Srnka) to music you’re unlikely to have heard elsewhere (Krejčí, Svoboda). In this last category, there’s a most intriguing opera being performed at the National Theatre: Václav Kašlik’s Krakatit, an opera based on a science-fiction tale by Karel Čapek which “predicted the path of human civilisation to the very brink of extinction” and whose score fuses contemporary classical with electronics, jazz and pop. (Čapek’s other claims to fame are the invention of the word “robot” and, in the opera world, the story which became Janáček’s Makropulos Case).
Prague is very close to the exact central point of Europe, and there are also plenty of concerts with Czech musicians performing music from elsewhere around the continent. The Czech Philharmonic performs Strauss, Pärt and Rachmaninov’s Fourth Piano Concerto, with pianist Lukáš Vondrácek; the same orchestra performs Shostakovich’s “Babi Yar” Symphony, with Jiří Bělohlávek at the helm. On May 24th, the Brno Philharmonic performs Holst’s The Planets coupled with Schnittke’s Faust Cantata, with a strong set of Czech singers. The Prague Symphony Orchestra tackles Carl Nielsen’s Symphony “The Inextinguishable”; they also perform Prokofiev’s Symphony no. 7, as well as Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto and H K Gruber’s recent 3 MOB Pieces.
It won’t have escaped you that Prague has a lot of top orchestras. The PKF Prague Philharmonia join in the fun to back a concert of opera arias from big names Nicolas Testé and Diana Damrau, who remains a big favourite of our US reviewers. But the highest profile event goes to the Prague Radio Symphony: the festival’s closing concert on June 2nd. Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki will be conducting his Symphony no. 7 “Seven Gates of Jerusalem”, written in 1997 to celebrate the city’s third millennium. The piece was originally branded as an oratorio and only later demarcated as a symphony: it’s built on an imposing scale and in the best tradition of large scale choral works. We’ve described Penderecki as “drawing a weighty and full sound” and “a rendition with wide range and telling detail” when conducting his own works.