“I tuned my viola as deep as I could
and a silent accompaniment to her late in the evening I sing.
A player with a penchant for brooding, crazed moods,
I want to have the strange charm of old, ironic ballads…”

Karel Hlaváček

The programme of this attractive concert features a classic work by Haydn, which inspired the theme of Smetana’s Triumphal Symphony, one of the key works by Antonín Dvořák and the entire world chamber music literature, and finally the premiere of a melodrama commissioned by the festival for the 150th anniversary of Karel Hlaváček’s birth.

Joseph Haydn:
String Quartet no. 62 in C major, Op. 76, no. 3 “Imperial”

Jan Jirásek:
And my bells do not pray…
Variations on a Theme by Hlaváček – melodrama for reciter, oboe and string quartet to a libretto by Vojtěch Stříteský and words of poems and prose by Karel Hlaváček

Antonín Dvořák:
String Quintet no. 3 in E flat major Op. 97

photogallery