Festival of Ancient Music 2010 - Musica Religiosa

The Festival of Ancient Music will open with a Latin Mass in the Church of St. John of Mathy on June 1, 2010. In the Big Evangelical Church, on Panenska street, on June 11, 2010, will be the performance of the Czech choir Societas Incognitorum.
The Festival concerts will take place in Bratislava in the first two weeks in June. This year will be dedicated to medieval music and to the pieces of the Renaissance with an emphasis on sacred music.
The seven concerts will offer musicans and the broader Slovak public an opportunity to become acquainted with the fascinating world of lesser-known and seldom performed music.
The patrons of the event, which is a part of the Year of Christian Culture, are the mayor of Bratislava, Andrej Ďurkovský; Mons. František Rábek, military ordinary; and the General Bishop of the Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in Slovakia, Miloš Klátik (The concert will be on the 11th of June).
The Festival is a part of the Year of Christian Culture in Slovakia. The Festival of Ancient Music takes place with the financial support of the City of Bratislava and ARS BRATISLAVENSIS, and other supporters.

The Festival of Ancient Music will open on June 1, 2010 with a Latin mass in the Church of St. John of Mathy. A new arrangement based on the Slovak Schola Gregoriana Bratislavensis, under the leadership of Milan Kolena, will resurrect the Gregorial chant for today´s Slovakia (Bratislava, Spiš).
The music culture of Central Europe will be presented in a performance by musicians from the Hungarian Schola Hungarica with conductor László Dobszay, together with performers from Bratislava, on June 10th in Jesuit Church.
The Czech symposium Societas Incognitorum led by Eduard Tomaštík will be introduced with the program „The Spiritual Music of Luther´s Prague and Surrounding Countries.“ The performance will be held on June 11, at 19 o´clock in the Big Evangelical Church on Panenska street. The patron of this concert will be General Bishop Miloš Klátik.

Other Festival guest choirs will perform spiritual music (monody and polyphony) from the 13th – 15th of century. The program on the theme of Mary – Gloriosa Domina – will be offered by the French choir Ligeriana under the direction of conductor Katii Caré (June 2nd in the Jesuit Church) as well as a trio of Norwegian vocalists, Trio Mediæval, on June 8th in the Klarisky Concert Hall Klarisky together with the percussionist Birger Mistereggen. They will perform English medieval choral music and also old Norwegian ballads and lullabies. Coplas djudeo-espanyoles is the name of the program of the Belgian chorus. La Roza Enflorese will perform on June 6th in the concert hall at Dvorana High School of the Music and Art. Here you can listen to the sefardic spiritual songs performed on period instruments.

The Festival of Ancient Music will close with a performance by the Russian Patriarchal Choir from Moscow under the leadership of Anatolij Grindenka. The program will be devoted to Russian sacred music from the 16th – 19th centuries.

All the participating choirs in the Festival of Ancient Music 2010 are regular performers at prestigious concert halls and festivals, and frequent prize winners. The choice of the concert repertoire and the style of its interpretation is based on the intensive study of the period technique and research in the field of the ancient music manuscripts, that are well-preserved in many European archives, including the Slovak archives.