Song evening at Smolenice Castle

Private Beethoven’s requiem and non-Christmas fish with Schubert.

The concert, which gives us the chance not only to discover that the icon of the Christmas season and the author of the popular Christmas mass “Czech Christmas Mass” Jakub Ján Ryba also composed very funny and warm songs, but also shows that Beethoven would not have survived without the Czech nobility and that his Prague connections they inspired in him an extraordinary invention, thanks to which he composed the first private requiem in the history of music. Who would then be surprised to discover that Schubert was the first environmentalist and that he was able to translate his sympathy for a certain kind of fish into music?
You will find the answer to this question at the concert, which will take place in an original place, with an exceptional instrument, with great artists and with an exceptional program.

We cordially invite you to the concert, which will take place on November 15, 2022 at 18:00 at the Castle in Smolenice.

Entrance: free

Barbara Maria Willi
her love of historic instruments and tuning skills were brought to her by Jos van Immerseel and Mark Lindley. In it, Jesper Christensen built a desire to realize the general bass as faithfully as possible to baroque principles.

She collaborated with artists such as Magdalena Kožená, Martina Janková, Erich Hoeprich, Doron Sherwin, Erich Höbarth, Sergio Azzolini, Christian Leiterer, etc. Barbara Maria Willi performs on important stages such as the Zurich Opera House, the Vienna Konzerthaus, the philharmonic halls in Krakow, Essen, Wrocław, the Bratislava Castle, the Rudolfinum in Prague and others.

The harpsichordist and hammer piano soloist likes to bring new perspectives to musical perception. She thoroughly researched the sources of the 17th-century bass guitar and often surprises with her unique realizations. With the hammer piano, she initiated a research journey into the field of 18th-century songwriting and introduced a whole range of unknown Czech authors (Josef Rösler, Ján Hugo Voříšek, Leopold Koželuh, etc.).

Barbara Maria Willi founded the harpsichord class at the Janáček Academy of Performing Arts in Brno and since 2014 has been the head of the department of organ and historical interpretation there.

Her dramaturgy for the Concentus Moraviae festival are imaginative and provocative (Flemish storm, great composers and her enemies). Thanks to her work, Concentus Moraviae became the biennale of early music with the largest number of concerts on authentic instruments in Central Europe. Since 2014, he is also responsible for the dramaturgy of the Bach organ autumn festival. Together with the agency C.E.M.A. founded a successful cycle of early music concerts in Brno under the name Barbara Maria Willi presents.

She is the author of the generalbass detective story “Generalbass or who murdered the counterpoint?” (Musica Sacra, Brno 2010). Currently, he is also engaged in the interpretation of contemporary music, among others with the Brno Contemporary Orchestra.

Tomáš Šelc
is a graduate of the University of Performing Arts in Bratislava in the class of prof. Peter Mikuláš. Before studying at VŠMU, he completed opera singing and choral conducting at the Conservatory in Bratislava (Alžbeta Michálková, Dušan Bill). In 2013, he won the Student Personality of Slovakia award for the year 2013/2014 in the Music and Art category. In 2020, he was awarded the Fric Kafendu Award for excellent performance results at home and abroad. Since 2020, he has been a member of the Association of Concert Artists in Slovakia.
Despite his young age, he is a versatile performer dedicated to spiritual music, songwriting, opera and the operetta genre. Since 2006, he has regularly participated in domestic and foreign international singing competitions (Vráble, Trnava, Karlovy Vary, Kroměříž, Olomouc, Eger, Prague, Munich, Berlin), in which he regularly placed in the highest places (eight first places, one second and one third place) and received special awards from the jury.
He performed on prestigious concert stages and international festivals in Bratislava (Convergence, Bratislava Music Festival, Albrechtina, Days of Old Music), Žilina (Central European Festival of Concert Art), Spišské Podhradie (Musica Nobilis), Košice, Brno (Easter Festival of Sacred Music), Prague (Prague Spring, Jarmila Novotna Festival), Bayreuth, Hanover (GDR), Johannesburg (Johannesbourg International Mozart Festival), Warsaw (Ludwig van Beethoven Easter Festival), Wroclaw (Wratislavia Cantans), Santander (Festival de Santander), Bilbao (Festival Art Sacrum), Tokyo, Kanazawa, Lübeck (Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival) and others. He completed master classes focused on the interpretation of baroque music under the direction of Peter Schreier in Lübeck, Germany, and a master class with Eva Márton.
He participated in the world premieres of works by Jorge Boss and Vladimír Godár. He made recordings for Hänssler Classic (Gabriel Fauré: Requiem/dir. Rolf Beck), Pavian Records (Vladimír Godár – Querela pacis/dir. Andrew Parrott), Phaedra (Ján Levoslav Bella – Cirkevné diela/dir. David Porcelijn). In 2012, Pavian Records released his profile CD with Alexander Albrecht’s songwriting – “Biographie”. In 2013, he released his second profile CD with slovens on the Music Forum label