2/6 – 9/6 2012 5th Kutná Hora International Music Festival under the auspices of Mrs. Livia Klausova, wife of the President of the Czech Republic

Welcome Speech

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Dear Friends,

Let me warmly invite you to what will already be the fifth edition of our festival of chamber music and beyond, which we are in the process of preparing, as has become a tradition, for the first week of June. I am sure you will find a rich choice of options in the programme of concerts drawn up by Jiří Bárta.

As in previous years, this time too, most of the productions will be located in the splendid Church of St Barbara. The roster of artists appearing at the Festival includes names you have already become familiar with here: the pianist Konstantin Lifschitz, clarinettist Michel Raison, Roman Patočka, Karel Untermüller, and others.

Making their debut at the Festival will be the outstanding violinist of Russian extraction, Ilya Gringolts, and several Czech artists, including two highly promising young violinists, Martina Bačová and Josef Špaček. Also playing for the first time at the Festival will be the Baroco sempre giovane chamber ensemble.

All this, plus as ever, an element of pleasant surprise, will beckon to you to come and indulge in the experience of listening to beautiful music.

Alena Turková, Festival Director.

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2012, a year of doom, or a year of inception? Buffs of numerology and ancient calendars tend to predict the end of the world (whatever one is supposed to imagine behind the concept). Apart from them, many of those who have followed the evolution of the Euro-American civilization, may likewise seem tempted to guess that perhaps the cup is full to the point of overflowing, that definitely “something” must happen, something new and more fair for everyone (including our planet). There, prognoses vary, ranging from auguries of a new paradise on earth, to visions of war. One can only wait and see what comes out of it, I guess. One certainty that remains, though, is that right here, in the middle of Europe, there still stands the historical town of Kutná Hora, and that it´s getting ready for the fifth edition of its annual International Chamber Music Festival. The year 2012 per se has served us as a kind of motto for this year´s Festival: indeed, the Quartet for the End of Time, a tribute to nature in The Four Seasons by three completely disparate composers, and the sunken Titanic as a symbol of punished human conceit.

I do hope the Festival will bring you seven days of relief, entertainment and reflection, and that it will help you in braving the pessimism and bad mood that have been stealthily encroaching upon our daily life under the influence of the darkness that surrounds us.

Dear music-lovers, let no one and nothing spoil your mood: the beauties of the world are still very much here to be enjoyed.

I am looking forward, for the fifth time already, to having you at the Festival.

Jiří Bárta, Artistic Director

Programme - 5th Edition of the Festival

  • Saturday, June 2, 9:00 p.m. - Corpus Christi Chapel
  • Sunday, June 3, 7:30 p.m. - Church of St. Barbara
  • Monday, June 4, 7:30 p.m. - Church of St. Barbara
  • Thuesday, June 5, 7:30 p.m. - Corpus Christi Chapel
  • Wednesday, June 6, 7:30 p.m. - Church of St. Barbara
  • Thursday, June 7, 7:30 p.m. - Jesuit College
  • Friday, June 8, 7:30 p.m. - Church of St. Barbara
  • Saturday, June 9, 6:00 p.m. - Jesuit College
  • Saturday, June 9, 9:00 p.m. - Basic Art School assembly hall

Artists

Gallery

Contacts

  • Ing. Alena Turková, executive director: alena [at] mfkh.cz, cd.lotos [at] iol.cz
  • Jiří Bárta, artistic director: jiri [at] mfkh.cz, jiri [at] jiribarta.cz