Giorgio Mainerio, Josquin des Prez, Dario Castello, Giovanni Gabrieli, Giovanni de Macque, Nicolas Gombert, Gasparo Zanetti, Tarquinio Merula, Thomas Preston, Lodizico Grossi da Viadana, Gesualdo da Venosa, Samuel Scheidt. The programme of this year's edition of the Wratislavia Cantans festival does not lack masterpieces of Italian and Dutch music from the turn of the   17th century. Il Giardino Armonico, led by its founder and Artistic Director of the festival Giovanni Antonini, invites you to an extraordinary meeting with the music of the past.

France was the center of European music already in the Middle Ages. With the advent of the Renaissance the title of musical innovators was temporarily seized by the English. But it did not last long, because soon the whole continent was taken away by the creative Franco-Flemish artists. The creators from the Netherlands have influenced not only the development of polyphonic music, but also the imagination of performers and listeners. Their works were often enriched with hidden riddles, called Dutch tricks. It was not uncommon that the score could not be read correctly without solving these puzzles, present not only in the works of the most famous composers like Josquin des Prez and Nicolas Gombert. After the “golden era” of the Franco-Flemish artists came the Italians: the outstanding Carlo Gesualdo da Venosa or Giovanni Gabrieli were active already at the end of the 16^th century.

The programme of the evening features Italian and Dutch music, complemented by British and German works of Thomas Preston and Samuel Scheider. Selected compositions will be performed by Il Giardino Armonico, one of the most recognizable European ensembles of early music. Musicians have been working together for more than thirty years and specialize in historical performance. They use instruments from the epoch and employ musical knowledge helping to interpret properly the works of the past centuries. The band has performed numerous times at prestigious artistic events in some of the world's most famous venues, including Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Musikverein in Vienna, Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris or Carnegie Hall in New York.