Petr Nekoranec

Baroque Europe is well worth a journey today, just as it has always been in the past! The evolution of the opera in the early seventeenth century opened up undreamed of possibilities and wide-ranging scope for the interpretation of vocal music in general: the direct connection of real, experienced emotions and the artistically trained singing voice confronted composers of all countries with intriguing creative challenges. And these challenges were met by composers of the individual nations in remarkably creative but also very diverse ways: Claudio Monteverdi, one of the founding fathers of the operatic genre, developed a musical language in which word and music were intimately bound up with each other and thus made each emotion directly tangible. The “Orpheus Britannicus” Henry Purcell created compositions directly out of the charism of the theatre, producing music that is practically unsurpassed in its almost corporeal immediacy. Meanwhile, in their tragedies, French composers like Jean-Baptiste Lully, Marc-Antoine Charpentier and Jean-Philippe Rameau honed the musical refinement and sublimation of all human affects and emotions. By the beginning of the eighteenth century, great “composers of feeling” like Handel and Vivaldi were already able to tie in with a rich international tradition.

In an intimate setting, the Czech tenor Petr Nekoranec and the harpsichordist Kateřina Ochmanová transport us on a trip through the highly emotional world of sound that is Baroque vocal music.