STYL

Annual

St. Wenceslas

Music Festival

to Feature

Mezzo-Soprano

Singer Elīna Garanča

Czechia’s largest festival of ‘classical and sacred music’

music, the St. Wenceslas Music Festival (SWMF), takes

place from 2-28 September this year and offers a total of

thirty-three concerts. Associate Professor Igor Františák,

the event’s director and dramaturge, will now take us

through what we can expect of this year's festival.

SWMF traditionally features spectacular projects

with not only top tier solo acts, orchestras and

choirs, but also wonderful productions of global

authors. What can we look forward to

at the nineteenth annual WMF?

The event’s grand opening ceremony in a cathedral

in Ostrava will be a celebration of the great musical

genius, Mozart, performed by the PFK — Prague

Philharmonic — in staging with the most qualified

Czech conductor for early music, Václav Luks.

The closing moments will then belong to Dvořák’s

cantata ‘The Wedding Shirt’. Another monumental

featured project will be the concert of Adam

Plachetka, a bass-baritone solo singer from Vienna’s

National Opera and Metropolitan Opera in New

York, where you will be able to hear Dvořák’s

Biblical Songs. In Ludgeřovice’s neo-Gothic pearl,

you will be able to experience a concert performed

by the Czech Philharmonic Choir of Brno with

conductor Petr Fiala. However, I can already reveal

that the star of this year’s festival will be the opera

singer Elīna Garanča.

Text: redakce

Foto:

archiv SHF

The world-class mezzo-soprano singer, Elīna

Garanča, will visit Ostrava to perform at

the festival. This will surely be the greatest

music-related event of the year for

the Moravian-Silesian Region!

I hope that this will be one of the biggest musical

acts ever to visit not only our region. This will

be Elīna Garanča’s only concert in Czechia

this year and, as part of the festival, she will

be performing with the Janáček Philharmonic

Ostrava. Considering the uniqueness of this star

performance, it has become the most expensive

concert in the festival’s history, and I firmly believe

that it will be sold out.

106 ǀ POSITIV 1/2022

Your resident ensembles Collegium 1704 and

Collegium Marianum will also be performing.

What does ‘resident’ mean to you personally

and what projects did you pick this year?

Collegium 1704 has been with us and, in turn, we have

been with them since our collective beginnings, which

is something I highly appreciate. Over the years, we

have managed to put on some beautiful concerts, and

I daresay that this year will be no different, as we will be

bringing Händel’s oratorium, Israel in Egypt, to Ostrava.

Collegium Marianum will be performing two projects in

cooperation with the phenomenal violinist Lenka Torgersen

and influential Italian soprano singer Roberta Mameli. We

are deeply intertwined with both collectives not only as

musicians, but also as people — that is what I find uniquely

beautiful about our festival, that it offers amazing musical

performances but it also works as a platform for inspirational

meetings between musicians across countries and genres.

Your motto of ‘enjoy a church concert experience’

is also confirmed by your featuring of non-traditional

and jazz performances over the last couple years.

It must be quite the experience not only for

the audience but also for musicians who do not

commonly perform in churches.

Following their concerts, all of the performers always say

that it was something extraordinary — be they Dan Bárta,

Jarek Nohavica, Ondřej Havelka with the Melody Makers,

Ondřej Ruml, Beata Hlavenská, Cotatcha, Orchestra or

the protagonists of last year’s A Ballad for a Bandit. This

year, we will be hosting the first-rate Polish jazzman Adam

Baldych and the legendary Vertigo. After taking into account

our experience from previous years, I have decided to move

both of these jazz projects to the Hus Choir in Stará Bělá,

which has great acoustics and an intimate atmosphere, both

of which add a new dimension to chamber jazz.

Mr Františák, thank you for the interview.