Bratislava (Slovakia) revives its 17th-century musical heritage

On 6 October in Bratislava, the Slovak ensemble Le Nuove Musiche revives music by Johann Schimrack and Samuel Marckfelner, preserved in Levoča, and sets it alongside Schütz’s Musikalische Exequien. A journey through the musical networks of 17th-century Central Europe.

A nearly forgotten 17th-century composer active in what is now Slovakia returns to the concert hall. On 6 October, Le Nuove Musiche, founded in 2016 by the lutenist Jakub Mitrík, takes to the stage at the Slovak Philharmonic in Bratislava with several works by Johann Schimrack the Elder († 1657). An organist in Spišské Podhradie, in the historic Spiš region, Schimrack belonged to a flourishing Central European musical culture whose scores have notably survived in the Evangelical collection in Levoča.

Under the German conductor Jörn Hinnerk Andresen, with artistic direction by Jakub Mitrík, the ensemble’s orchestra and choir will perform six works by Schimrack, including the Missa super omnes gentes, Ecce mulier Cananea and Factum est silentium in coelo. The programme also features Samuel Marckfelner (1621–1674), an organist active in Levoča, with a selection from his tablature collection.

The inclusion of Heinrich Schütz’s Musikalische Exequien lends these rediscoveries an added dimension. Sources for the work were also preserved in Levoča and taken into account in its recent critical edition. The concert thus reveals the city’s Evangelical collection not simply as a piece of local heritage, but as evidence of the circulation of music across 17th-century Europe.

A concert that reminds us that 17th-century European musical life did not unfold only in Venice, Dresden or Paris: the towns of Spiš also nurtured an inventive musical culture, shaped by humanism, the Reformation and the circulation of music across Europe.

Festival website: https://www.bhsfestival.sk
Le Nuove Musiche website : https://www.lenuovemusiche.nl/