Foto: Croatian Baroque Ensemble

Antiqua Facing East: Facing east, one can discover quite some surprises! In 2008 Antiqua explores the composers and musicians of Eastern Europe and the Middle East and discovers a treasury of Russian, Croatian and Bohemian Baroque. The name of this year's festival of Early Music describes its schedule: Bolzano will be the place where musicians from Eastern and Western Europe meet. The rediscovery of Early Music, which started in the West in the 50s and 60s with a renewed interest in period instruments and historically aware playing techniques, has only recently started to establish itself, with great success, in the East. This new generation of artists from the East approach their interpretations with an inquisitive freshness that many in the West seem to have lost, and appear removed from the fixed fashions and well established ideas of what constitutes a "baroque" sound. Alongside the Soloists of Catherine the Great, Collegium Marianum-Praga, the Croatian Baroque Ensemble and the Trio Bitar-Rezk-Lakchour, the programme also features some more traditional, but none the less distinctive formations: the Duo Chiara Banchini-Patrizia Bovi features an unusual musical collage of Tartini Sonatas for violin soli and extracts from Tasso's "Gerusalemme liberata"; the Spanish group Axivil Aljamía dedicates itself entirely to Early Iberian Music and the rediscovery of long lost treasures, introducing a programme of Mozarabic music alongside Latin scriptures. The Bolzano Baroque Orchestra, with the vocalists Susanne Ryden and Christian Hilz, are performing their project "Dialogus", which draws upon works by Alessandro Stradella and Johann Sebastian Bach: an experience of passion and the high art of counterpointing.

Cantina Vini Schmid Oberrautner  Schmid Oberrautner Kellerei Via Fago 50 Fagenstr. 39100 Bolzano / Bozen