Blanka Hrubá, Operaplus.cz

The concert was an exceptional encounter with music that is not merely a historical curiosity but a living language of human feeling.

On the evening of 10 September 2025, the St Wenceslas Music Festival offered its audience a remarkable encounter with music that is seldom heard. In the imaginative programme Dvorská lyrika (Courtly Lyric), works by Guillaume de Machaut, the master of medieval poetry and music, resounded in the refectory of the Piarist Monastery in Příbor. The performers were Hana Blažíková, Vojtěch Semerád, Jakub Kydlíček, and Jaromír Meduna.

The programme was conceived as a carefully crafted literary-musical tapestry, interweaving recited excerpts from Machaut’s texts with the song forms ballade, lai, and virelai, as well as the instrumental form hoquetus (hocket).

The first notes seemed to open a gateway to another world, leading listeners through a kaleidoscope of melodic subtleties. Hana Blažíková, with her crystalline soprano, drew out a fragile tension between word and music. Her playing on the Gothic harp possessed a natural grace, providing an intimate underpinning to Machaut’s sound world.

Vojtěch Semerád, tenor and vielle player, brought to the songs the touch of an original storyteller. His voice combined medieval diction with human immediacy, flowing naturally between the musical forms in which Machaut unfolds the stories and symbols of love.

The sonic palette was further enriched by Jakub Kydlíček, who animated the recorders with ornamental precision and a vivid aural imagination.