2021

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Both Cappella Mariana and fama Q are among the leading ensembles in the Czech Republic. While the vocal group, which includes the best singers of early music, has an impressive profile based mostly on Renaissance polyphony, the string quartet, founded by violinist David Danel, occupies an irreplaceable position on the contemporary music scene. The Contempuls festival will bring them both together for a performance of ET LUX by the living classic of German music Wolfgang Rihm, a piece that draws on both backgrounds. This meditation on the words of the Latin requiem mass, lasting over an hour, often evokes early music. The quiet sounds of the string quartet might remind listeners of a consort of viols, while the vocal style typical of historically informed performance and a number of harmonic progressions also seem to point several centuries back into the past. Rihm works not with history, but with memory, or rather with the way in which we understand memory; with how our memories reveal the past. The composer takes a similar approach to the words themselves: “… they have not been left unedited and they are not in the correct liturgical order,” he states. “They appear as components reminding the listener of a gradually uncovered whole.”


With the support of the Czech-German Future Fund


YouTube:
Wolfgang Rihm talks about "Et Lux" (ECM Release March 2015)

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What are the desires of the comic book duck? What do Sundays look like on the outskirts of the empire? And how can we avoid getting lost in the labyrinth? The second festival concert probably won’t answer any of these questions. It will, however, introduce the most highly respected Israeli ensemble for contemporary music. For over two decades, the Meitar Ensemble has been at the cutting edge of the world of contemporary music, regularly collaborating with established composers including Georg Friedrich Haas, Helmut Lachenmann, or Chaya Czernowin and performing at the most renowned festivals of new music around the world. The New York Times praises the Meitar Ensemble for their “perfection, balance, and precision”. They have commissioned and premiered over three hundred new works.
At their Prague concert, the ensemble will introduce a representative overview of their core repertoire, as well as a world premiere of a new festival commission by the Czech composer Soňa Vetchá, recipient of the OSA award for the most successful young composer of 2020.


The concert is held under the auspices of the Embassy of the State of Israel

With the support of the Leoš Janáček Foundation


YouTube:
Sarah Nemtsov: [you] from PHONEME (Crossing Borders)

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The German Signum Quartett is one of the most dynamic string quartets working today. They are equally at home in classical repertoire and in the most demanding contemporary music, in traditional concert halls and at specialised festival. They work with composers including Wolfgang Rihm, Erkki-Sven Tüür, Jörg Widmann, or Thomas Adès.
Kevin Volans, an Irish composer born in South Africa, who was a guest of the Contempuls festival in 2016, wrote his String Quartet no. 12 for Signum. This enigmatic thirty-five-minute piece attests to the creative journey of this student of Karlheinz Stockhausen influenced by traditional African music and the musical ideas of Morton Feldman. At the end of the concert, the Signum Quartett will be joined by fama Q for a joint performance of Volans’s Zen-like String Quartet no. 6, based on the alternation of a few simple chords between the two ensembles.


With the support of the Czech-German Future Fund


YouTube:
Kevin Volans: String Quartet No. 12 excerpt A (Signum Quartet)
Kevin Volans: String Quartet No. 12 excerpt B (Signum Quartet)