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 … 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 … 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 … 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 … 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 show … 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 … 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 … Read more…
On June 27 the Prague-based Alfred ve Dvoře Theatre premiered an experimental opera performance The Lists of Infinity by a composer Martin Smolka. This performance directed by Jiří Adámek, who is also the author of the libretto, is in fact a new version of a piece composed 2 years ago on a commission for the New Opera days Ostrava (NODO) … Read more…
The opening evening of the New Opera Days Ostrava (NODO) biennale, which was held between the 27 and 30 June, offered a world premiere of William William, an opera by a composer and the festival’s artistic director Petr Kotík (*1942). The performance took place in the industrial milieu of the Hlubina coal mine. William William is, as the … Read more…
On June 11 the Theater Mönchengladbach (North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany) saw a premiere of Janáček’s opera Katja Kabanowa which was last played here 26 years ago. The story of one of the composers’s strongest female characters was put on stage by a team composed almost exclusively of women – from the scenographer and wardrobe supervisor, past the dramaturge to … Read more…
For the first time in its history, Teatro Real in Madrid staged a new production of Viktor Ullmann’s Emperor of Atlantis (1943). Dramaturgically the premiere was a part of the theatre’s special programme series of works composed mostly by Jewish authors in the 1930s and 1940s. Apart from the main attraction, Arnold Schönberg’s Moses and Aaron, the series … Read more…
A song cycle Confessions of a Poet by Juraj Filas received its world premiere at a concert of the composers’ association Harmonia held by the Prague Spring festival on 2 June at the St Agnes’ Convent. It was performed by a renowned Czech baritone Ivan Kusnjer and a pianist Daniel Wiesner. The cycle’s four songs March – To She Who … Read more…
On May 28 one of Bohuslav Martinů’s operatic masterpieces, Juliette (1937-38), was performed, for the first time in the theatre’s history, at the Staatsoper Berlin. The all-star cast includes the Czech mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kožená in the title role of Juliette and Rolando Villazón as Michel; the conductor is the Staatsoper’s musical director Daniel Barenboim. Much … Read more…
On May 25 at the Saint Anna’s Church in České Budějovice, the South Czech Philharmonic gave world premiere to a Concerto for Violin and Orchestra by a violinist and composer Pavel Fischer (*1965). The piece is dedicated to Helena Jiříkovská who recently replaced Fischer in the position of the Škampa Quartet’s first violinist which he had been … Read more…