Held on 6th December at the Saint Lawrence Church, Prague, this year’s last concert of the composers’ association Konvergence was focused exclusively on Czech contemporary music. Six pieces on the program involved Michal Rataj’s Running For Breath. This piano solo composition was written already in 2013 but it was not until now that it received its world … Read more…
Three concerts took place during the fourth week of the Days of Contemporary Music festival. All of them were held at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague with fifteen of the twenty pieces presented enjoying their world premiere. The program on November 21 consisted exclusively of chamber music. Pallets and Shading by Jiří Bezděk … Read more…
One of the goals the Contempuls festival has been working towards is to support Czech composers and to give them the opportunity to present themselves in an international context. At this year’s last two concerts, premiere was given to three pieces by Czech authors of the young generation – Jakub Rataj, Jan Ryant Dřízal and Jiří Kadeřábek. … Read more…
Three concerts of Czech 20th and 21st century music took place during the second and third week of the Days of Contemporary Music festival. All of them were held in the halls of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. The festival has since long been focusing on premiering new pieces and the concert on … Read more…
MoEns ensemble: premieres of pieces by Marek Kopelent, Hanuš Bartoň, Michal Nejtek and Kamil Doležal
MoEns ensemble who specializes exclusively in contemporary music played a concert on November 8 at the Gallery of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. This time, they gave world premieres to four compositions by their members or related artists – Marek Kopelent, Hanuš Bartoň, Michal Nejtek and Kamil Doležal. Comprising of Doležal (clarinet), David Danel (violin), … Read more…
Held on 15th November at La Fabrika, Prague, the second evening of the Contempuls festival was opened with a recital by British pianist and new music expert Ian Pace. For the first bit, he chose two pieces by Luboš Mrkvička (*1978). Mrkvička typically marks his pieces by letters only and always sees them as arbitrarily combinable … Read more…
The 8th year of the Prague contemporary music festival Contempuls started on Friday 11th November with an orchestral concert in La Fabrika, Holešovice. Besides Jo Kondo’s To the Headland, Bent Sørensen’s Piano Concerto No. 2 „La Mattina“ (with Jonathan Powell as a soloist in place of indisposed Jan Bartoš) and Symphony: Daar kom die Alibama by Kevin Volans, … Read more…
The 27th year of the Days of Contemporary Music festival started on 2nd November in Prague. Organized by the Society of Czech Composers, it will stage nine concerts and present 55 pieces by Czech contemporary composers. The opening concert was held at the Church of Virgin Mary under the Chain in Lesser Town of Prague. … Read more…
Early Spring (Předjaří), audio-visual composition by Martin Klusák (*1987) received its world premiere at the recent concert of the Berg Orchestra which took place on 31st October at the St. Agnes Convent in Prague. It was with this piece that the author successfully finished his studies of composition at the Academy of Performing Arts in … Read more…
Staatsoper Hannover chose to present Bedřich Smetana’s The Bartered Bride as one of their productions for the 2016/2017 season. The premiere took place on 29th October and there are ten more performances to follow. The production was directed by Martin G. Berger, young German director celebrated especially for his radical production of Strauss’ Die Fledermaus (also … Read more…
The last concert of this year’s Exposition of New Music festival was a recital by the Italian pianist Emanuele Torquati. It was held on October 23rd at the Bedední dům in Brno and consisted of six piano pieces by contemporary composers. Czech music was represented by two compositions by Petr Bakla one of which, First Movement and … Read more…
One of the events of this year’s Exposition of New Music festival (Octobre 19 – 23, Brno) was a recital by a saxophone and clarinet player Pavel Zlámal. Zlámal, who specializes in contemporary and experimental music, performed four pieces for saxophone solo from 1956 – 2016. Christian Lauba’s Hard, Simon Steen-Andersen’s De profundis and Gianti Scelsi’s Tre pezzi were followed by … Read more…
It has become a custom for the Orthodox music festival Archaion Kallos to annually present new pieces by young Czech composers. Last year it was music by Jan Dušek and Petr Koronthály, this time by Slavomír Hořínka and Jan Ryant Dřízal. The chamber music concert was held on 18 October at the Gallery of the Academy … Read more…
The 71st year of the Bregenzer Festspiele festival (Vorarlberg, Austria) presented a new production of Make No Noise, chamber opera by a renowned Czech composer Miroslav Srnka. Directed by Johannes Erath, it was performed on 17 and 19 August in the modern Werkstattbühne hall. Commissioned by the Bavarian State Opera, Make No Noise was written in 2011 … Read more…
Held regularly from as early as 1969, the Carinthischer Sommer festival in Villach, the metropolis of the federal state of Carinthia, is one of the best known and most popular festivals in Austria. This year among those representing the contemporary music scene was the composer Ondřej Adámek (*1979), one of the festival’s Artists in Residence for 2016. … Read more…
Savonlinna Opera Festival, held between July 8 and August 6 in Savonlinna in the south-east of Finland, presented From the House of the Dead (1928), the very last opera by Leoš Janáček. The premiere took place on July 23 in a curious location of the medieval Olavinlinna castle. The production is a famous one, created by David … Read more…
A new production of Jenůfa by Leoš Janáček is one of the four performances played at Longborough Festival Opera this year. Held between June 9 and August 4, this festival offers what is referred to as “country house opera” experience, which means that the works are performed at remote country houses. In addition to the … Read more…
The Prague-based string quartet fama Q gave a concert in a small Castillian town Quintanar de la Orden at the 23rd Festival de Música La Mancha. Among the works performed were the world premieres of String Quartet No. 2 by Petr Bakla and String Quartet by Jakub Rataj. The other pieces on the programme were written by … Read more…
Five performances of Bohuslav Martinů’s Mirandolina were held at the renowned Teatro La Fenice (Venice) in the first half of July. Directed by Gianmaria Aliverta, this opera from 1953-54 based on a comedy La Locandiera (The Mistress of the Inn) by Carlo Goldoni (1707-1793) was this time set into a present-day wellness centre of a modern hotel. The conductor is … Read more…
NODO – New Opera Days Ostrava presented a world premiere of Protracted Sinuous Movement of a Longitudinal Object , an opera by a composer and scientist Petr Cígler which was written directly for the festival. The performance took place on June 29 at the Antonín Dvořák Theatre. Petr Odo Macháček’s libretto explores the relations between a woman, a man, and a rattlesnake in a common … Read more…