The Final Week of the Prague Spring 2026 Festival
The final week of this year’s Prague Spring Festival will be a grand affair. It will conclude with the artistic residency of Canadian singer and conductor Barbara Hannigan, and the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, conductor Lahav Shani, and ARD Munich competition winner, pianist Lukas Sternath, will make their Prague Spring debut. Among the airplanes, cars, and locomotives of the National Technical Museum, the music of Luigi Nono will resonate; the Jussen brothers’ piano duo will return to the festival; and the closing concert will feature Verdi’s Requiem with a dream cast.
On Monday, June 1, the Prague Spring presents listeners with a difficult choice: the National Technical Museum (NTM) will host a site-specific project presenting the music of two leading Italian composers – Salvatore Sciarrino and Luigi Nono. From the latter’s oeuvre, violinist Hana Kotková, together with Italian musicologist and one of the foremost experts on Nono’s work, Veniero Rizzardi, will perform the piece La lontananza nostalgica utopica futura for violin and eight sound tracks, which the artists have impressively set within the space of the National Technic Museum’s Transport Hall. Veniero Rizzardi was present at an authentic performance of this piece by Nono – inspired by an inscription on the wall of a monastery in Toledo – featuring violinist Gidon Kremer, and thus knows this work, which arises largely from the mutual interaction of the artists directly within a given space and moment, down to the last detail.
At the same time, the Smetana Hall at the Municipal House will host three major Prague Spring debuts. Making their festival debut will be the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, conductor Lahav Shani, and Austrian piano prodigy Lukas Sternath, winner of eight prizes – including first prize – at the 2022 ARD Munich Competition and the prestigious title of ECHO Rising Star 2024–2025. The program for the June 1 concert features Robert Schumann’s famous piano concerto, into which the composer wove the name of his great love, Clara Schumann, in the poetic form “CHiArA.” Also on the program are Johannes Brahms’s Second Symphony and the magnificent score Cyrano de Bergerac by the Dutch composer Johan Wagenaar, active at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, inspired by Edmond Rostand’s play of the same name.
On Tuesday, June 2, the absolutely exceptional Prague Spring residency of Canadian soprano and conductor Barbara Hannigan will come to a close, as she presents her second festival programme with the Czech Philharmonic. This time, she will appear in works by Charles Ives, Joseph Haydn, and Arnold Schoenberg purely as a conductor. She will combine her vocal artistry with conducting only in the final suite from George Gershwin’s musical Girl Crazy, in which the musicians of the Czech Philharmonic are also expected to sing.
Following the great success of their program with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, the Dutch piano duo Lucas and Arthur Jussen will return to the stage of the Dvořák Hall at the Rudolfinum on Wednesday, June 3. This time, however, they will present a completely different musical world. They have invited percussionists Alexei Gerassimez and Emil Kuyumcuyan to join them, with whom they will follow in the footsteps of 20th- and 21st-century composers. In an arrangement for two pianos and percussion, the program will feature a suite from Leonard Bernstein’s musical West Side Story, John Adams’ Short Ride in a Fast Machine, and Béla Bartók’s famous Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion. From the works of George Gershwin, listeners can look forward to Rhapsody in Blue arranged for two pianos, and a piece for percussion alone will also be included. The Czech premiere of Beyond Stickability for two percussionists by Alexei Gerassimez will be performed. A new feature of the festival will be a public dress rehearsal for elementary school children from across the Czech Republic, in collaboration with the “Helping Schools Succeed” program, which is part of the activities of The Kellner Family Foundation.
The Prague Spring 2026 festival will culminate on Thursday, June 4, with a performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s Messa da Requiem at the Smetana Hall of the Municipal House, featuring a unique collaboration between the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden, one of Europe’s oldest choirs, the Singverein der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien, and a quartet of world-class soloists: Eleonora Buratto (soprano), Elīna Garanča (mezzo-soprano), Benjamin Bernheim (tenor), and Riccardo Zanellato (bass). The performance will be conducted by one of the most distinguished bearers of the Italian musical tradition – conductor Daniele Gatti. As is tradition, the partner of the closing concert is innogy Česká republika, which is also a partner of the Prague Spring Festival.
The last tickets for the festival concerts are available online at this website and at the festival box offices at the Rudolfinum and the Municipal House.
