The Dvořák Collection is an exclusive concert series representing a long journey of familiarisation with Dvořák’s works, presented in interpretations of the highest quality. This year it is time for Dvořák’s piano trios and piano quintets. Many of you certainly remember last year’s performances of all the piano quartets and of all of the compositions for piano solo and piano four-hands. This year’s special guest for the series is Sir András Schiff with his friends and colleagues from the Panocha Quartet. Playing a dominant role in the series this year is the pianist Boris Giltburg with the Pavel Haas Quartet. They will not only take a look back at last year’s festival, but they will also give us a foretaste of what the Dvořák Collection and the Chamber Series will be like in the years to come. They will be performing all of Dvořák’s chamber music written for string quartet.

This year Boris Giltburg is the curator of the Chamber Series, which overlaps significantly with the Dvořák Collection. Giltburg’s joint appearances with members of the Pavel Haas Quartet have a firm foundation in their successful collaborations over the years.

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Last year, the festival’s Chamber Series began to cross over into the Dvořák Collection series, and that will be the case again this year. The Chamber Series curator is the pianist Boris Giltburg, who has invited members of the Pavel Haas Quartet to join him in performing Dvořák’s piano trios. At the same time, they will present Dvořák’s music within a broader context – the music of Robert Schumann, Franz Schubert, and Dmitri Shostakovich will be heard as well.

Giltburg’s collaboration with the Pavel Haas Quartet promises musical excellence on par with their previous concerts and recordings. Dvořák’s music will be heard in juxtaposition with Schumann; Dvořák held Schumann’s chamber music and piano works in especially high regard. The next concert they will perform in the series features Dvořák alongside Schubert, with his great sensitivity to combining melodic feeling with musical depth. And finally, we will be given the opportunity to imagine Dvořák gazing into the future, thanks to a programme confronting his music with the playfulness and melancholy of Shostakovich’s.

Another special guest for the Chamber Series will be the legendary pianist Sir András Schiff, an artist-in-residence of the festival. His joint appearances with the Panocha Quartet will present both of Dvořák’s piano quintets on a single evening, with the five-movement Bagatelles in between.

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The Vienna Philharmonic, the orchestra of Milan’s Teatro alla Scala, the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, and the Camerata Salzburg. Promoting the World Class Orchestras concert series might seem to require nothing but a list of participating ensembles, but that’s only part of the greatness. Combining the music with outstanding conductors and soloists will elevate these great orchestras to an even higher level.

In each case, listeners can count on hearing a performance of supreme quality. At the same time, they will get to see how the opera orchestra from La Scala, under the baton of Andrés Orozco-Estrada, handles Dvořák’s music, so familiar to us, or whether they are better suited to the tempestuous Romanticism of Berlioz the next day. The Vienna Philharmonic and the legendary Herbert Blomstedt will mostly stick to the Viennese classics – Schubert, Bruckner, and Brahms. This year, the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra and Jakub Hrůša will present themselves alongside the Czech Philharmonic as the festival’s second orchestra-in-residence, symbolically returning the Bamberg orchestra to its Czech roots. The Academy of St Martin in the Fields and the great violinist Joshua Bell have built a programme around Dvořák’s Violin Concerto, and the Camerata Salzburg will present Dvořák together with his beloved Mozart.

Thanks to the World Class Orchestras series, the Dvořák Prague Festival will be the home of wonderful symphonic sound as it is heard from Milan to London.

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The Dvořák Prague Festival and the Czech Philharmonic have been in partnership since the festival’s inception. Both the festival and the orchestra can also regard the great Czech composer as their father. The leading Czech orchestra will be giving three concerts at this year’s festival, and it will also take part in one of the year’s highpoints: a performance of Dvořák’s celebratory oratorio Saint Ludmila at St Vitus’s Cathedral. This is more than simply a musical event; it will serve as a dignified commemoration of the 1,100th anniversary of the death of the important Czech saint. The roots of Czech culture will encounter one of its supreme manifestation and a Czech orchestra in superb form.  

The first festival concert of the Czech Philharmonic will bring together Dvořák’s son-in-law Josef Suk and Sergei Rachmaninoff. At the festival’s conclusion, the orchestra will present itself as the partner of the pianist, conductor, and festival artist-in-residence Sir András Schiff.

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The Recital Series presents in a concentrated form the artistry of Sir András Schiff, one of the festival’s artists-in-residence. The superb pianist will be a protagonist at several concerts of this year’s Dvořák Prague Festival. His recital will be the purest revelation of his solo playing, above all as a poet of magical sound and of captivating melancholy.

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Anyone who has doubts about the future of classical music may find such fears assuaged by attending even just one of the concerts devoted to young musicians at the Dvořák Prague Festival. Among them include performances by the Dvořák Prague Youth Philharmonic, the talented pianist Kit Armstrong, and concerts of participants in the Concertino Praga competition.

Under the leadership of Tomáš Netopil, the Dvořák Prague Youth Philharmonic will perform a programme that includes the composition Dvořák Airlines by Lukáš Sommer. This is the very first work commissioned by the festival. At 28, Kit Armstrong stands out for both his musical and mathematical gifts; he is appearing at the festival as a pianist on the threshold of an extraordinary career. Concertino Praga gives teens an opportunity to present not only their artistry, but also to demonstrate their ability to deal with stage fright and stress – things that are part of a musician’s everyday life.

Just as in other areas of human endeavour, including sports, the limits of elite-level performance in music are advancing, slowly but surely. Of course, the performance of a musician is not measured with accuracy down to the thousandth of a second. However, the direct confrontation of young performers’ concerts with those of their established colleagues can reveal the subtle differences that separate good, exceptional, and ingenious performances.

For the first time, this series will include an ancillary programme, in accordance with the idea behind the For the Future series. That idea is to develop young, talented musicians and assist them in their path towards interpretive mastery. This will be achieved by holding three public masterclasses at this year’s festival. The mentors are artists who need no introduction: Sir András Schiff, Dmitry Sitkovetsky, and Boris Giltburg. 

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It has now become a tradition for festival guests on the eve of the festival’s commencement to set out ‘On the Trail of Dvořák’. These excursions take them to places that were critical in Dvořák’s life, which on the last Sunday before the festival’s festive opening come alive with music and a vivacious expert explanation by the festival’s musicologist, Dr. David Beveridge.

With its excursions ‘On the Trail of Dvořák’ the Dvořák Prague Festival is paying overdue homage to the legacy of the most widely-admired Czech composer.

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Family Day at the Dvořák Prague Festival is a day for sharing the joy of music and for fun and games for children and their parents. At the Rudolfinum, Duo Vrámoll, a popular piano duo, will present a musical and dramatic performance called “Music History in a Nutshell”. There will be plenty of art and music workshops for the children. The highpoint of Family Day will be a concert of young musicians who attend or have graduated from elementary schools of the arts, and who were participants in the successful Karel Komárek Family Foundation project “Pianos for Schools”. They will present their artistry at the Rudolfinum’s Dvořák Hall accompanied by a symphony orchestra led by their more experienced colleagues Jan Kučera and Ondřej Gregor Brzobohatý.

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