Special concert celebrating Tadeusz Strugała's 80th birthday
September 16th (Wednesday), 7 p.m.
National Forum of Music, Main Hall, Wrocław
during the 50. Wratislavia Cantans
details on www.2015.wratislaviacantans.pl/#!en/events/60
The 50th International Festival "Wratislavia Cantans"
September 6th-19th, 2015
The special jubilee edition of the International Festival “Wratislavia Cantans” is taking place between 6th and 19th September 2015. For the last half a century, the “Wratislavia Cantans” has enjoyed the position of the most important classical music festival in this part of Europe. For years it was the only chance for audiences behind the “Iron Curtain” to meet world class artists. Today eminent conductors, instrumentalists and singers flock to Wrocław in order to give concerts with the ensembles of the National Forum of Music (NFM), the Festival organiser. This year, for the first time in the “Wratislavia” Festival’s history, the audience and the musicians have at their disposal a concert hall designed and built to the highest world standards. The NFM concert hall offers a space that allows vocal and instrumental works to reveal their full acoustic beauty.
This modern hall is also an ideal space for Mahler’s monumental symphonies. The first guest orchestra to perform in the new prestigious venue is the legendary Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, which – under the baton of one of the greatest living conductors, Zubin Mehta – will present Mahler’s 9th. The great final gala concert of the 50th “Wratislavia” features a performance of the Symphony of a Thousand – Mahler’s only work which met with an enthusiastic reception already during his lifetime. The symphony’s name comes from the imposing performing forces that it calls for: the audience will hear the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir, three NFM choirs, as well as soloists, all conducted by a master of great symphonic forms: Jacek Kaspszyk.
Reconstructions of concerts from the 1st “Wratislavia Cantans” are a special attraction of this year’s Festival. The inaugural concert is an exact repetition of the programme with which the magnificent history of the Festival once began. Though today the presence of contemporary music may surprise part of the Festival audience, performances of most recent works were one of the key ideas introduced by the founder of the Festival, Andrzej Markowski, and so the opening programme on 14th August 1966 featured works composed from only a few to a dozen years before: Andrzej Koszewski’s La espero,Konstanty Regamey’s L’alerte, La sécurité, L’a_aire se complique and La môme néant from Cinq poèmes de Jean Tardieu, Olivier Messiaen’s Cinq rechants, Krzysztof Penderecki’s Psalms of David, as well as Artur Malawski’s David and The Peaks. Also as during the 1st festival edition, the audience will hear Mozart’s finest piece of liturgical music: the Mass in C Minor (in the interpretation of the brilliant Il Giardino Armonico) as well as a concert of works by Polish Baroque masters: Marcin Mielczewski and Bartłomiej Pękiel.
Among the guests of this year’s Festival there is Ensemble Organum with its leader Marcel Pérès – the man who changed the meaning and sound of Gregorian chant, which met with both admiration and sharp criticism. The famous Tasto Solo ensemble will revive music from 15th-century manuscripts.
Giovanni Antonini, the Festival’s artistic director, aims to present at the “Wratislavia” also vocal music from less familiar traditions, different from the West European choral repertoire. Thus, Russian Orthodox church music will return to the Festival in the interpretation of the Russian Patriarchate Choir of Moscow, admired throughout the world. On the other hand, Antonini wants the “Wratislavia” to remain young and curious about the world. This is why he has invited the “born madmen” – the multiple Grammy-winning eighth blackbird ensemble, as well as Agata Zubel.
Another element of the Festival’s jubilee is a concert led by Tadeusz Strugała, the longest-serving director of the “Wratislavia Cantans”, who celebrates his 80th birthday and 60 years of artistic work. He will conduct the NFM Symphony Orchestra, which has its 70th anniversary this year.
deatils on www.2015.wratislaviacantans.pl/#!en/program