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  You are invited to the June concert "Festival Brikcius" & "Duo Brikcius - 2 Cellos Tour", held on Thursday 21st June 2012, 7.30pm, at representative concert hall from the 13th century, the Stone Bell House (GHMP, 3rd floor, Staroměstské náměstí 605/13, Praha 1, Czech Republic). Czech cellists, siblings Anna Brikciusová and František Brikcius, will feature unknown compositions by famous composers.

  June concert "Festival Brikcius" will introduce, in the day of Summer Solstice, programme "Duo Brikcius - 2 Cellos Tour" that will be, after many concerts in the Czech republic and abroad (Algeria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Germany, Poland, Sweden, Turkey), back in Prague. Cello chamber ensemble will perform Sei Fughe by Luigi Boccherini (1743 - 1805), Sonata by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 - 1791), Duetto by celebrating Gioacchino Rossini (1792 - 1863), Stücke by Paul Hindemith (1895 - 1963), Fantasie for two cellos (2008) by Irena Kosíková dedicated to Duo Brikcius and Duo by Gideon Klein (1919 - 1945), written shortly before the World War Two, second movement is symbolically "Incompiuto". Duo and others compositions by Gideon Klein were promoted and revised by composer Vojtěch Saudek (1951 - 2003), grandnephew of Franz Kafka.

  First autumnal concert "Festival Brikcius" (František Brikcius - cello) will be held after summer holidays, on Thursday 18th October 2012.

  Tickets are exclusively available through official festival ticket sales Prague Ticket Office - Via Musica (http://www.PragueTicketOffice.com - Via Musica, AMU, Malostranské náměstí 14, Praha 1 - Via Musica, Staroměstské náměstí 14, Praha 1 - Tel.: +420 224 826 440) and cca 90 minutes before every concert available at the door. Due to the limited number of seats we strongly recommend early booking. Support "Festival Brikcius" and buy maecenas ticket here (you will be granted honorary seat and you will receive 2nd ticket with no charges + CD for free).

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  Italian composer Gioachino Antonio Rossini was born on 29th February 1792, in Pesaro in Italy, into a family of a horn player Giuseppe and a singer Anna. Rossini began his musical training early and by the age of six he was playing the triangle in his father's musical group. Rossini's father was sympathetic to the French Revolution that resulted in his brief imprisonment in 1800. His mother was seconda donna in a theatre at Ancona during the carnival season of 1798, following year she had become a prima donna and performed until 1808 in Bologna, Iesi, Lugo, Fano, Imola, Reggio nell'Emilia and Rovigo. The young Rossini soon began joining his parents on these tours, in 1801 he was listed as playing the viola in the orchestra. His father taught him to play the horn, he was instructed in singing, playing the harpsichord and he began to study composition.

  In 1804 the family was already residing in Bologna and in 1806 Rossini entered the Liceo Musicale (Conservatorio di Bologna) to study courses in singing, the cello and the piano. The following year he was admitted to the counterpoint class of Padre Stanislao Mattei (1750 - 1825). 1908 Rossini received the Liceo Musicale prize for his composition. Two years later his first opera was produced in Venice. Further new operas in Bologna, Rome, Venice and Milan.

  In 1815 he retired to his home in Bologna, where Domenico Barbaia, the impresario of the Naples theatre, contracted an agreement that made him musical director of the Teatro di San Carlo and the Teatro del Fondo at Naples. He would compose one opera a year for each theatre. His payment was to be 200 ducats per month; he was also to receive a share from the gambling tables in the theatre, amounting to about 1000 ducats per annum. This was an extraordinarily lucrative arrangement for any professional musician at that time. Rossini's most famous opera was produced on 20 February 1816, at the Teatro Argentina in Rome.

  Rossini met Ludwig van Beethoven and married the renowned Spanish opera singer Isabella Colbran (1785 - 1845) in 1822. In the same year he moved from Italy to Vienna where his operas were the rage of the audiences and where he was later invited by Prince Metternich (1773 - 1859). Here he made friends with French writer and diplomat François-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand  (1768 - 1848) and HSH Princess Dorothea von Lieven (1785 - 1857), wife of Prince Khristofor Andreyevich Lieven, Russian ambassador to London.

  In 1823, at the suggestion of the manager of the King's Theatre in London, he came to England where he was introduced to King George IV (1762 - 1830) and granted the receipt of £7000 after a residence of five months. The next year he became musical director of the Théâtre des Italiens in Paris at a salary of £800 per annum. Rossini’s popularity in Paris was so great that Charles X (1757 - 1836) gave him a contract to write five new operas a year, and at the expiration of the contract he was to receive a generous pension for life. When he was thirty-eight years old he had already composed thirty-eight operas.


  Rossini Duetto for cello and double bass was commissioned in 1824 by amateur cellist Sir David Salomons (1797 - 1873), Jewish Lord Mayor of London, for a soirée featuring a duet with the famous bass virtuoso Domenico Dragonetti (1763 - 1846).

  His mother died on 20 February 1827, during rehearsals for Moïse. Since 1832 Rossini was not well, he was continually ill, did almost nothing, and wrote no more operas. He left Paris in 1836. The same year Isabella Colbran was legally separated from the composer, but continued to live in Rossini's father house until her death in 1845. She was buried near Bologna alongside her and Rossini's parents.


  Rossini and Olympe Pélissier (1799 - 1878), who had sat for French painter Émile Jean-Horace Vernet (1789 - 1863) for his picture of Judith and Holofernes, established a salon in Milan during winter 1837 - 1838. But the death of his father in 1839 again weakened Rossini. His only activity was as honorary consultant to the Bologna Liceo Musicale. On 16 August 1846 Rossini married Olympe Pélissier. Political disturbances compelled Rossini to leave Bologna in 1848. After living for a time in Florence, he returned back to Paris in 1855, where his health improved dramatically, he returned to life and he began to compose again.

  He died at the age of 76 from pneumonia at his country house at Passy on Friday, 13 November 1868. His funeral was attended by thousands, and memorial services were held throughout France and Italy. He was buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, France. After the death of Olympe in 1878, his remains were moved to the Basilica di Santa Croce di Firenze, in Florence.

  Apart from some individual legacies in favour of his wife and relatives, Rossini willed his entire estate and remaining autographs to the Commune of Pesaro, it was invested to establish a Liceo Musicale (since 1940 Conservatorio Statale di Musica "Gioachino Rossini"), the Fondazione G. Rossini and the Prix Rossini.

  Because of characteristic mannerism in his orchestral scoring Rossini earned the nickname "Signor Crescendo". Rossini was a grand officer of the Legion of Honour and recipient of many orders. He had been a well-known gourmand and an excellent amateur chef his entire life.

  "Festival Brikcius" & "Duo Brikcius" in 2012 remind the 220th anniversary of the birth of the Italian composer Gioacchino Rossini.

  For more information about Gioachino Rossini visit http://www.Brikcius.com , http://www.FondazioneRossini.org and http://En.Wikipedia.org/Wiki/Gioachino_Rossini .

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