Let There Be Light in the New Year!

Dear friends of the Prague Spring, we hope you have entered the new year with optimism and curiosity. We wish you happiness and good health in the twelve months ahead, the company of people with whom you feel truly at ease, and that music may remain your cherished companion throughout 2026. 

What better way to celebrate the arrival of a new year – a time of fresh beginnings and new resolutions – than with Haydn’s oratorio The Creation? Inspired by the music of George Frideric Handel, the then sixty-year-old Joseph Haydn captured in his score the entire sweep of the familiar biblical story: the creation of the heavens and the plants, the birth of animals, and Adam and Eve themselves. The list of subscribers to the first printed edition of the score ran to more than 400 names, including that of one of the composer’s great admirers, King George III of England.

At the Prague Spring Festival, The Creation will bring together the finest of Czech and international historically informed performance traditions of eighteenth-century music. The outstanding British period-instrument ensemble Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment will be conducted by Czech conductor Václav Luks. The evening will also feature an exceptional trio of soloists: Australian-British soprano Samantha Clarke, a graduate of London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama; the highly acclaimed Bach specialist tenor Nick Pritchard, who has made his debut at the BBC Proms and records for the prestigious Deutsche Grammophon label; and Croatian bass-baritone Krešimir Stražanac, who this season will appear, among others, under the baton of Klaus Mäkelä and with the renowned Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin.

If you would like to experience the miracle of creation this year, join us on 28 May at the Rudolfinum as part of the Prague Spring Festival!