As every year, the program of the International Music Festival Český Krumlov 2014 will be dedicated to a variety of genres. Although the focal point is classical music, the festival will traditionally also offer other genres. Visitors may look forward to important personalities of jazz, folklore and musicals. And naturally an important fact was taken into consideration when creating this year’s program – 2014 is being celebrated as the Year of Czech Music so several concerts were conceived in this spirit.     

Bedřich Smetana, Antonín Dvořák, Leoš Janáček, Bohuslav Martinů, Jan Dismas Zelenka, Oskar Nedbal, Rafael Kubelík and others are important names in the field of music which people around the world reliably recognize as “Czech”. The anniversaries of the abovementioned and many others happen to be in years ending with the number four and therefore they are traditionally considered Years of Czech Music not only in our country but also abroad. 

One of the domestic ensembles to perform a symphonic concert at the festival in honour of the Year of Czech Music will be the North Czech Philharmonic Teplice with a young talented conductor, Tomáš Brauner, when they play Smetana’s My Homeland at the Castle Riding Hall on 19^th July. After the opening concert, the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra will present itself once again in front of the festival audience on 26^th July under the baton of Romanian conductor Ion Marin and together with violinist Ivan Ženatý they will pay tribute to Antonín Dvořák through his works.    

A top Czech ensemble in the field of historically informed performance of baroque music, Collegium 1704, with conductor Václav Luks and soloists will perform compositions by Jan Dismas Zelenka (this year we are celebrating the 335^th anniversary of his birth!) at the Baroque Theatre on 31^st July. Collegium 1704 abound in excellent dispositions of the different members of the orchestra, who shine in concertante as well as solo composed parts and at the same time they are all able to maintain the necessary discipline for elaborate harmony.   

Chamber concerts will be presented at the festival by Czech performers such as, for example, violoncellist Jiří Bárta, harpist Jana Boušková and ensembles Trio Martinů and Pavel Haas Quartet, which bears the name of the Czech composer of the first half of the 20th century Pavel Haas, brother of the famous film actor and director Hugo Haas. Pavel Haas was Leoš Janáček’s student and one of the most outstanding musical talents of his time. In 1941 he was deported to Terezín and in 1944 he died in the Auschwitz concentration camp. His string quartets, one of which the audience will hear at the concert, represent one of the highlights of his creative work and provide us with the idea of the loss his death meant to world music.   

The program of the festival does not consist solely of so-called “classical music” but includes a number of genres. The Czech theme will also be present during the evenings of these different genres: on 2^nd August the Czech multigenre evening will take place in the Brewery Garden where, among others, Vojtěch Dyk in original cooperation with the B-Side Band from Brno will perform. And on 9^th August the musical genre returns to Český Krumlov. Popular musical singers and Thalia Award winners Monika Absolonová, Jan Kříž, Leona Machálková, Ondřej Ruml and others will present a selection from Czech musicals and melodies from Czech musical films such as Ballad for a Bandit, If a Thousand Clarinets, Hop Pickers, A Night at Karlstein, Dracula, Joan of Arc and Hamlet.