Photo: Summer Festivities of Early Music
The annual Summer Festivities of Early Music get underway in Prague on Tuesday evening, bringing historical music to unique venues around the Czech capital. I discussed the event with its director Josefína Knoblochová and I first asked her about the opening concert by Germany’s Ensemble Polyharmonique:
“The ensemble Polyharmonic with its artistic director Alexander Schneider will perform in Prague for the very first time. They will appear in a vocal ensemble consisting of six members accompanied by basso continuo. Our opening concert is devoted to the muse Polyhymnia, because she is the muse of hymn singing and choral lyrics.
“The other muse of the evening will be Italian music, which inspired very strongly the musical culture of the 17th century in the west of Europe. So it means that this vocal instrumental program shows direct confrontation of Italian models with their echoes in Protestant Germany.”
See the rest here.