Bohuslav Martinů Days 2025

The Bohuslav Martinů Days are entering their fourth decade!

The Bohuslav Martinů Days are entering a new decade on the wave of singing by the Kühn Mixed Choir. From November 10 to December 9, the Martinů Hall of the Liechtenstein Palace will welcome excellent soloists, a new recording of Martinů's music performed by the Pavel Haas Quartet, and the Karlovy Vary Symphony Orchestra.

"To kick off the new decade of the festival, we have prepared an exceptional program, including choral and chamber singing, a piano recital by Igor Ardašev, and an orchestral concert with pianist Daniel Wiesner. With the Kühn Mixed Choir, we will premiere Martinů's cantata Mikeš z hor from our Complete Edition, and with the Pavel Haas Quartet, we will launch a new recording of Martinů's string quartets," says Irvin Venyš, director of the festival and the Bohuslav Martinů Foundation.

The fourth decade will begin on November 10 in the Martinů Hall with the Kühn Mixed Choir, which, together with the outstanding soloists Kristýna Kůstková, Ondřej Holub, Pavel Praženica, and Barocco sempre giovane, will perform the cantata Mikeš z hor, which the choir performed in its world premiere in June 1959 at its first concert. The program will also feature music by Jaroslav Ježek, Pavel Bořkovec, Petr Eben, and Miroslav Raichl. Before the concert, there will be a ceremonial presentation of three new volumes of the complete edition of Bohuslav Martinů's correspondence with his family, Frank Rybka, and Karel Šebánek at the Respiria.

The second festival concert on November 19 will also be carried on a wave of song. Opera and concert singer Simona Houda Šaturová will present a program based on folk songs. Novák, Bartók, Janáček, Suchoň, Kaprálová, Slavický... all of them are connected to Martinů either by their masterful use of folk elements, evident even in their purely “artificial” compositions, or by personal relationships. The audience can also look forward to solo performances by Marek Kozák, one of the best pianists of his generation.

The title of Igor Ardašev '8' piano recital does not bear the number eight by chance. On November 25, the Martinů Hall will resound with a technically demanding repertoire consisting of one of the most important classical works – Beethoven's “Pathetic” Eighth Piano Sonata, followed by the philosophically profound Eight Preludes by Miloslav Kabeláč and the stylistically lighter but compositionally brilliant piece of the same name by Bohuslav Martinů. Performed by Ardašev, who has long been considered one of the absolute best pianists not only in the Czech Republic, it will undoubtedly be an unforgettable evening.

The Pavel Haas Quartet has been performing Bohuslav Martinů's string quartets for six years. This spring, it recorded his second, third, fifth, and seventh string quartets, and the recording will be released by Supraphon. Where else to launch a new recording of Bohuslav Martinů's music than at a festival bearing his name? The concert on December 2 will open with Vítězslava Kaprálová's three-movement String Quartet, Op. 8, followed by Bohuslav Martinů's String Quartets Nos. 3, 5, and 7 from the new album.

On December 9, the Martinů Hall will welcome the Karlovy Vary Symphony Orchestra with conductor Ondřej Vrabec and pianist Daniel Wiesner, and Debussy's Afternoon of a Faun will be the first piece performed. After the impressionistic introduction, we will hear Bohuslav Martinů's Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 1 performed by the excellent pianist Daniel Wiesner. The second half of the concert will again belong to Martinů. Sinfonietta La Jolla, commissioned in 1950 by the music society of the Californian town of the same name, became the composer's farewell to neoclassicism. The festival will bid farewell to its 31st edition with a performance of Sinfonietta, which will also be based on the forthcoming complete edition.

The accompanying program will present the ŠTĚDROŇ 25 project, which maps the legacy of two prominent figures of 20th-century Czech music – composer Vladimír Štědroň and musicologist Bohumír Štědroň – and, on the occasion of the 125th and 120th anniversaries of their births, reveals their family story against the broader context of Czech modernism. The evening, featuring performances by Ivo Kahánek, Anna Paulová, Bella Adamová, and the Wihan Quartet, will be preceded by a lecture by Prof. Miloš Štědroň.

Advance tickets will be available from June 5, 2025, on the GoOut network.

For more information, visit: martinufestival.cz