The 8th season of the Prague Clarinet Days festival will open with the performance of an excellent string Graffe Quartet, laureate of many prestigious competitions and one of the most recognised ensembles of its generation. The quartet will perform along with two excellent clarinet soloists - Irvin Venyš and Vlastimil Mareš. In the first part, the audience can look forward to a virtuosic quintet by František Vincenc Kramář. He was born in Vysočina, and as the last maestro di cappella for the Imperial Court of Austria, he surpassed even W. A. Mozart. One of Mozart’s most significant chamber-music compositions, which was dedicated to Anton Stadler, the most famous clarinettist of his time, will be performed in the second part of the programme. Mozart called Stadler “Lumpus pumpus” because of his frequent and rather significant loans and subsequent defaults. 
Even though Anton Stadler purposefully lost the manuscript of this composition, allegedly in order to prevent anyone else from playing it, luckily, the transcriptions have been saved.

Programme:
Franz Vinzenz Krommer: Quintet for Clarinet and Strings in B flat Major, Op.95
Graffe Quartet and Vlastimil Mareš - clarinet 

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Quintet For Clarinet And Strings In A Major, K. 581 
Graffe Quartet and Irvin Venyš - clarinet 

Graffe Quartet:
Štěpán Graffe – violin, Lukáš Bednařík - violin, Lukáš Cybulski – viola, Michal Hreňo – cello

“As well as any proper opera, The Marksman is about great love and a conflict between presumed good and evil, represented here by Kašpar and Max..”

The audience can look forward to a modern adaptation of C. M. von Weber’s most famous romantic opera, adapted for an ensemble of six clarinets and a narrator. The most popular musical parts of the opera set in the Jizera Mountains and short texts filled with humour form a compact concert programme. The Clarimonia Ensemble from Germany, who took over dramaturgy, has been engaged in adjusting original compositions for clarinet-family instruments for several years. A unique cast will present seventeen of these instruments at the concert: twelve clarinets, three basset horns and a two bass clarinets. 

A unique and humorous text, written by Bernhard Kösling and read by Ivan Jiřík, pleasantly reimagines Johann Friedrich Kind’s original libretto. 
The members of the ensemble decided to perform The Marksman after their successful performances of Mozart’s The Magic Flute and Don Giovanni and we would love to invite you to its opening night.

Narrator: Ivan Jiřík 
In collaboration with: Jakub Korčák

Residents of master classes will perform at this traditional and very popular concert along with their teachers who are world-class soloists themselves – Ernesto Molinari (Switzerland),
Michel Lethiec (France) and Masatoshi Tanaka (Japan).
The audience can look forward to performances ranging from a classical repertoire (Brahms, Debussy, Francaix, Martinů, Mozart etc.) interpreted by young clarinet players from the Czech Republic, Japan, France, Poland, Slovakia and Spain, to the Tanaka Quartet that will play a jazz version of the composition written by the Japanese composer Rentaro Taki. 
Piano accompaniment will be provided by excellent pianists: Dana Drapelova and Daniel Wiesner. 
Each concert’s particular program becomes a “living organism”
created and rehearsed during the master classes.

Programme:
Jaroslav Ježek: Bugatti Step
Jiří Hlaváč: Hornomlýnská 846
Jaroslav Ježek: Dark Blue World 

Five Star Clarinet Quartet: Jiří Hlaváč, Vlastimil Mareš, Irvin Venyš - clarinets, Jan Mach - bass clarinet

Gustav Hollst: Jupiter (from The Planets suite)
George Gershwin: Prelude
George Gershwin: Oh, Lady Be Good
Leonard Bernstein: America
Zequinha de Abreu: Tico Tico

Festival Clarinet Ensemlbe, conducts by Vít Spilka