DIXIT DOMINUS BY HANDEL: VÁCLAV LUKS AND COLLEGIUM 1704

"During the rehearsal, an older man with white hair - Sir Eliot Gardiner - approached the podium of conductor Václav Luks, and the cameras and mobile phones of the musicians were instantly at the ready. If the name doesn't ring a bell, just imagine Pep Guardiola appearing in the middle of a Sparta Prague training session." This is how one of the Collegium 1704 singers described the meeting between its conductor and Sir Eliot Gardiner at the Salzburg Festival in 2016.
The photograph of Gardiner greeting the Czech conductor became the image that showed how a chamber group from when Luks was still a student had become one of today’s most prominent orchestras specialising in the Baroque period. Thus, after seeing their career flourish in the main halls of Europe, achieving immense public and critical success, Collegium 1704 debuts in Barcelona.
This concert brings together German and Bohemian Baroque, and their specialties. They will offer us the dramatic and virtuoso Dixit Dominus, written by a very young Handel during his trip to Italy, and a version of Missa 1724 by Jan Dismas Zelenka, the Bohemian composer leading Luks' project.