"This part of the year is usually a black hole for quality classical music," says Hasenörhl. "We wanted to do something to help bring the level up to where it should be."

Hasenörhl has organized a series of eight concerts packaged by composers and nationalities. There are evenings devoted to Mozart (July 27) and British contemporary composer Barry Mason (July 29), and a sweet selection of visiting musicians supplying the hooks for the international nights: Italian, British, American, Czech, Japanese and Italian.

As it happens, Italian composers are scattered throughout the festival, since the Italian night piece — Verdi's Requiem — is enough to fill an entire evening (Aug. 7). But that should be quite an evening, with four Italian singers, including Maurizio Graziani and Paolo Pecchioli from La Scala, and conductor Marcello Rota, a star on the Italian opera scene. Throw in the Czech Philharmonic Choir of Brno, and you've got an international mix worthy of any festival in Prague.

That theme runs throughout Prague Proms, with, for example, rising stars Tomomi Nishimoto (conductor) and Hideyo Harada (piano) leading a "Japanese night" of Verdi, Tchaikovsky and Berlioz (Aug. 6). The British night ("English night" in the program) features the esteemed English Chamber Orchestra with member soloists Stephanie Gonley and Annabelle Meare on violins and Hasenörhl on trumpet in a mostly Baroque evening of Bach, Haydn, Vivaldi, Tartini and Bartók (July 26).

The opening concert (July 24) features noted Czech conductor Libor Pešek leading the CNSO in a very tasty mix — Berlioz, Rachmaninov and Debussy — that concludes with Ravel's Bolero. The latter would seem an obvious tourist-pleasing choice, but in fact the piece has sentimental value for the orchestra. It was the last work the CNSO played under the baton of Zdeněk Košler, the first chief conductor of the orchestra, who died 10 years ago this month. "It's our remembrance and tribute to him," says Hasenörhl.

Which is not to say that the festival is above pandering to parochial tastes. American night (July 31) features the energetic CNSO guest conductor Paul Freeman and pianist Leon Bates in both serious fare — Bernstein and Gershwin — and shameless crowd-pleasers, most notably John Williams' soundtrack music for Star Wars.

And why not? Summer is a time when anything goes, and in that spirit Hasenörhl has extended the programming to a very unlikely setting: the rococo Café Imperial on Na Poříčí, where after the concerts on four nights (July 24 and 26, Aug. 6 and 7) there will be jazz jam sessions with great names like Tonya Graves and Emil Viklický. In Hasenörhl's mind, this all runs seamlessly together.

"After the concert, you're always looking for some place to go," he says. "And I think many classical music fans also like jazz."