Violino virtuoso

The Heyday of Violin Art in the 17th-Century Bohemia
(H.  I.  F. Biber, J. H.  Schmelzer, G. Muffat)

Harmonie Universelle (Germany)
Florian Deuter - violin /artistic director
Mónica Waisman - violin
Dane Roberts - violone
James Johnstone - harpsichord /organ

Wednesday July 28th, 2010, 7.30 pm
Refectory of Dominican Monastery, Jilská street, Prague 1

At the end of July, the refectory hall of the Dominican monastery treated  those present to a veritable feast of music for strings. Under the watchful auspices of SS. Dominic, Giles, Thomas Aquinas and many others represented on the hall’s arches, the international group Harmonie Universelle, with first violinist Florian Deuter at its helm, provided a supreme demonstration of its art through the performance of sonatas and partitas by Johann Heinrich Schmelzer, Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber and Georg Muffat. These composers, who spent part of their lives in Bohemia in the seventeenth century, thus symbolically returned to Prague. Saint Dominic  is depicted on the vaulted ceiling as being served by angels – but this evening he sang along with them and the performers.