THE YEAR OF CZECH MUSIC AT AMU

The year 2024 is the Year of Czech Music, and this is something that should not go unnoticed. This is the reason why we at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague will celebrate the Year of Czech Music by organising several concerts. Most of them will take place outside AMU’s premises.

At the end of April, we will introduce a collaboration between the student orchestras from two art universities, the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (AMU) and Kunstuniversität Graz (KUG), which will culminate in two concerts. One will take place in Graz on 29 April and the other in Prague’s Bethlehem Chapel the very next day, 30 April. Audiences can look forward to a varied repertoire that students from both schools have been preparing since January: select pieces from the Czech-Austrian symphonic oeuvre including works by W. A. Mozart, A. Dvořák, and KUG composition student Victor Morató Ribera whose piece will premiere at the joint concert in Graz. The project is being undertaken in cooperation with the Czech Technical University and with support from the Czech Ministry of Education, the Czech Centre in Vienna, and the Austrian Cultural Forum in Prague. Tickets to the Prague concert are available from the GoOut network.

Furthermore, we have organised a series of several more concerts. Titled ‘Classical Less Seriously’, the project purports to show that music referred to as classical can be accessible to everyone and does not have to be interpreted strictly in concert halls. The first concert with the subtitle AMU (Not Only) for Plants will take place at the Botanical Garden of the Faculty of Science, Charles University on 14 May. The performers will be the students of the Voice and Opera Directing Department of AMU’s Music and Dance Faculty, Veronika Kaiserová and Filip Šťovíček, accompanied by Stanislav Bogunia on keyboards. They will perform Antonín Dvořák’s songs selected from the National Tone and Love Songs cycles, as well as select arias from operas by Bedřich Smetana.

The following spring event organised as part of Classical Less Seriously is the 4th AMU Environmental Day. It is subtitled the Picnic Day for this year and will be held in the meditation garden of AMU’s Music and Dance Faculty (HAMU) on 25 June. The programme will include folk songs performed by the Veselé chvíle choir (which comprises primarily the students and alumni of our Theatre Faculty), a singing workshop with a focus (not only) on Gregorian chant guided by Jiří Hodina, a folk dancing workshop prepared by HAMU’s Dance Department, and a folk dancing show, all of which will be accompanied by the CimbalMusic cimbalom ensemble.

We will inform you about the events planned for the autumn in good time.

23. April 2024