ADAMOVA & SCHÄFER

“In a world full of cruelty, it is so important to take notice of everyday displays of tenderness, our own little versions of heaven on earth,” says mezzo-soprano Bella Adamova about the programme of her debut at the Prague Spring Festival. Together with her artistic partner, German pianist Malte Schäfer, she will perform a programme of songs by romantic authors and composers of the 20th and 21st centuries, combining the motifs of love, cruelty and loss. Bella Adamova moves between several music style periods, genres and cultures with natural ease. A native of Chechnya, she grew up in Prague, studied in Germany, Switzerland and London. With Malte Schäfer, she became the winner of the Robert Schumann International Music Competition in Zwickau, Saxony, and ranked second at the International Chamber Music Competition entitled “Franz Schubert und die Musik der Moderne” in Graz. With originally built programmes of songs, they like to tell stories that reflect human experience across centuries and reveal unexpected connections between seemingly diverse authors on a journey full of experience and dark humour. Therefore, music by Robert Schumann to the lyrics of Danish “fairy-tale writer” Hans Christian Andersen can be found next to the contemporary composer Miroslav Srnka, while the morbid story of jealousy and murder in Three Old Inscriptions by Gÿogy Kurtág follows the songs by Leoš Janáček, Gustav Mahler and Stefan Wolpe depicting the destinies of people affected by war.