Italian polyphony of the Renaissance and Baroque still impresses today's audiences. It is quite often the case that we find ages-old music astonishingly unobvious in a way that would not shame modern composers. Together with the Le Concert Spirituel ensemble we invite you to a musical review of the most beautiful works from the south of Europe.

It is beyond doubt that if it was not for the fantastic Italian composers, European music would develop in a completely different direction. How exactly? It is hard to know for sure, but we may suspect that Johann Sebastian Bach's fugue, based on the counterpoint concept developed by Italians, would never come to life. We can suspect that the works of Georg Friedrich Händel or Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart himself, who both used Italian patterns, would also be different. For this reason, the Wratislavia Cantans Festival would like to invite you to a review of the exceptional works of Italian masters, this time focusing on the art of polyphony, whose years of splendor were the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The concert programme features the works of great masters such as Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, worshiped by the Catholic Church of the time, and Claudio Monteverdi, one of the opera fathers and co-author of excellent motets.

Le Concert Spirituel guarantees top quality of performance of the works by Italian artists. The name of the ensemble was borrowed from the name of the first series of public concerts in history that took place in 18th-century France and later continued in other European countries. The ensemble’s repertoire, dominated by French music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, is clearly reflected in that name. Since its foundation in 1988, the group has been led by Hervé Niquet, conductor and harpsichordist, expert in French baroque music.