Bach Festivals & Cantata Series
Bach Days, Kraków

Name:

Bach Festival Days = Bach Days = Days of Bach

Location:

Kraków (Cracow), Poland

Venues:

Florianka Recital Hall, Basztowa 8
Academy of Music in Kraków, ul. św. Tomasza 43
Pauline Church, ul. Skałeczna 15

Years:

Since 1997 (?) (Annual Festival)

Months:

March

Artistic Director:

Krakow Academy of Music

Ensembles:

Website:

Akademia Muzyczna w Krakowie
Magiczny Krakow: 15^th Bach Days

History & Mission:

“Bach sollte nicht Bach, sondern Meer heissen” (Not Brook but Sea should be his name! – based on a play on words: Bach is “brook” in German) – Ludwig van Beethoven once said. A segment of this sea of music will be presented during the 15^th Bach Days (21-28 March, 2010) by teachers, graduates and students of the Academy of Music in Kraków and their guests. Organ works – it is with these that Johann Sebastian Bach is most strongly associated. During the Days, however, instruments that were equally popular in the Baroque can be heard : harpsichords, recorder and flute traverso, the clavichord, Baroque violins and cellos and viola da gamba - for the organisers and performers want to show a different side to the composer. That’s why we can find in the programme a series of instrumental concerts played by virtuosos: harpsichordists Elżbieta Stefańska, Jacques Ogg and Andrzej Zawisza, clavichordist Bernhard Klapprott, flautists Peter Holtstag and Wilbert Hazelzet, and violinists Anna Śliwa and Zbigniew Pilch. Alongside the established performers, we’ll be able to hear young disciples of the musical arts from Kraków’s colleges, as well as students of the Academies of Music in Bydgoszcz and Wrocław. The guests will be presenting the “Around Bach” programme, comprised of works by composers who were his contemporaries and in the fantasias, toccatas and fugues we’ll be looking for “Rigour and Liberties in the Music of Johann Sebastian Bach”.
There will be no shortage of works for larger performance ensembles: the Baroque Orchestra of the Academy of Music in Kraków will play, among other works, two Brandenburg Concertos, as well as selected parts of Bach’s opus magnum – the Art of the Fugue collection, in which the composer decided to demonstrate all the possibilities in the polyphonic arrangement of one musical theme. The vocal-instrumental output of the Baroque genius will be represented by the concert of cantatas and motets bringing Bach Days to a close.

Barbara Skowrońska, Karnet monthly

Recent Festivals:

6^th Festival: 2002
7^th Festival: 2003
9^th Festival: 2004
10^th Festival: 2005

11^th Festival: 2006
12^th Festival: Mar 28-Apr 2, 2007
13^th Festival: 2008
14^th Festival: Mar 22-23, 2009
15^th Festival: Mar 21-28, 2010
16^th Festival: Mar 25-31, 2011
17^th Festival: Mar 29-Apr 1, 2012
18^th Festival: Mar 12-17, 2013
19^th Festival: Mar 20-23, 2014
20^th Festival: Mar 8-15, 2015

21^th Festival: Matr 6-16, 2016

Logo: