On April 30 the Theater für Niedersachsen in Hildeshaim, Lower Saxony, gave premiere to a new production of Bedřich Smetana’s The Bartered Bride. It was created by Guillermo Amaya, a Spanish director who currently holds the post of the theatre’s chief stage director, and conducted by its music director Werner Seitzer. The leading roles are sung by the Spanish … Read more…
On 30 April the Theatre Trier, Germany, launched for the first time in its history one of Leoš Janáček’s less frequently played operas The Excursions of Mr. Brouček (1920). The production was created by Jasmina Hadziahmetovic, a Germany-based director of Bosnian origin who has collaborated as an assistant director with several renowned institutions such as Komische Oper … Read more…
On 29 and 30 April two performances of Janáček’s Cunning Little Vixen at Les Quinconces theatre in Le mons, France, closed the production’s tour organized by the Paris-based opera house Arcal. The company’s aim being to bring high-quality opera performances to regions where these are otherwise not particularly easy to find, the ensemble’s mission consists of travelling through the … Read more…
Antonín Dvořák’s Rusalka was performed in South Korea for the first time in history on 28 April in a new production by Korean National Opera. Its cast includes exclusively Korean singers, which is in a country suffering from a lack of qualified opera artists a very unusual phenomenon. Two leading Korean sopranos alternate in the tite role of Rusalka – … Read more…
This year’s winner of the Opernwelt magazine’s ‘Opera House of the Year’ award, Oper Frankfurt, launched a new production of Leoš Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen as its 10th premiere of the 2015/2016 season. Owing to the last century’s environmental disasters no longer being able to perceive the forrest as the ‘wonderfully beautiful’ place as sung by the Forester in … Read more…
A new production of Antonín Dvořák’s Rusalka received its premiere on Saturday 23 April at Saarländisches Staatstheater in Saarbrücken, Germany. It was produced by David Hermann, a successful German-French director already experienced with Czech music; his recent production of The Makropulos Affair is currently on at the Deutsche Oper Berlin. Saarländisches Staatstheater’s music director Christopher Ward (UK) is … Read more…
Hats in the Sky (2004), Oh, my Admired C minor (2002) and Rubato (1995). Three chamber pieces by a prominent Czech composer Martin Smolka were performed at the Mendelssohn Hall of Leipzig’s Gewandhaus by the Ensemble Avantgarde, a residential ensemble for contemporary music, together with the music of the ensemble’s artistic director Steffen Schleiermacher. Different as the composers’ musical … Read more…
The German version of Janáček’s song cycle The Diary of One who Disappeared (1917-1919) was given its premiere on 8 April in Vienna. Composed by a nearly 65-year-old Janáček as a love declaration for an unattainable woman, this passionate story consisting of 21 short songs to the poetry of Ozef Kalda was performed in the stylish Razumovsky Salon … Read more…
A new production of Hans Krása’s children’s opera Brundibár received its premiere on 9 April at the Teatro Royal in Madrid. Its being part of this opera season’s programme has to do with the overall dramaturgy which, as the theatre’s artistic director Joan Matabosch puts it, is focused on works revolving around the topic of the „Central European anti-Semitism … Read more…
Alter-Ego, a new piece by a composer and rector of Janáček’s Academy of Music and Performing Arts, received its world premiere during a ‘Hommage to Czech music’ concert by the Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra which was at the same time the final concert of the orchestra’s 70th jubilee season. The double concerto for bass clarinet and piano was performed by the … Read more…
Clarinet Concerto in D major by a well-known composer and jazzman Emil Viklický (*1948) received its world premiere during the 38. year of the Pardubice Music Spring international music festival. The sixth of the festival’s thirty concerts took place on 1 April in the Big hall of the Chrudim Museum. The concerto was performed by the chamber string … Read more…
A new production of the opera Brundibár by Hans Krása was presented during this year’s mid-season festival held by Opéra de Lyon. Composed in 1938 yet premiered and more than fifty times reprised not until five years afterwards at the Theresienstadt concentration camp by the deported Jewish children, this over 30-minute-long children’s opera is, according to the … Read more…
Michal Rataj’s Missa Abstracta accompanied the opening of Patrik Hábl’s art installation at the historical complex of the Speinshart monastery in Bavaria on 26 March. Inspired by the so-called Screen Tearing – a visual artifact created by the disturbance of the display device -, the installation was based on the covering of the nave’s altar area by the monumental … Read more…
Pavel Zemek Novák’s new piece Seven Last Words received its world premiere during the 25th year of the Brno-based Easter Festival of Sacred Music. It opened the third of the festival’s concerts named ‘Still Hymn’ which took place on 22 March in the functionalist Church of Saint Augustine and during which the Ensemble Opera Diversa conducted by … Read more…
Ebony suite by a composer and clarinettist Jiří Hlaváč (*1948) received its world premiere at a concert held by the Czech Chamber Music Society on 16 March at the Suk Hall of Rudolfinum. It was performed by the Five Star Clarinet Quartet, an ensemble comprising Hlaváč as its player and dramaturge as well as three of his … Read more…
The programme of the final concert of the 3-day Fokus Sport festival run by the Alte Oper Frankfurt included the composition Observing the Clouds by Martin Smolka. This piece from 2003, which, through its irregular and unpredictable rhythmical structure, expresses the dynamics of a badminton game, was performed on 12 March at the Alte Oper’s Great Hall … Read more…
Ondřej Adámek’s new composition for airmachine, a musical instrument designed and created by the composer himself, and 15 players received its world premiere on 10 March during the Biennale Musiques en Scène contemporary arts festival in Lyon. Adámek has been experimenting with the various modes of the instrument’s construction since 2009. Made up of a wind tunnel and multiple … Read more…
On 10 March at the Zlín Congress Centre, Bohuslav Martinů Phlharmonic Orchestra premiered a new orchestral piece by Jiří Pavlica, a violinist and composer whose musical language, though oscillating between various genres, is influenced especially by folk music. The Moravian Dances orchestral suite, too, derives from folk dances from different Moravian regions (Haná, Moravian Slovakia, “odzemek” from … Read more…
On their concerts on March 9, 10 and 11 the Czech Philharmonic performed – as this season’s second world premiere of a piece by a Czech composer already – Miloš Bok’s Apocalypse in Kamenická Stráň. This monumental 50-minute long vocal-instrumental composition for mixed and children’s choir, four soloists and a large orchestra is in fact only the first half of the … Read more…
Ondřej Štochl’s composition YIN – Nostalgia and Hope received its world premiere on 9 March at the Museum of Applied Arts of the Moravian Gallery by Brno Contemporary Orchestra. This piece for vibraphone and 12 instruments was on the programme of an evening called “Assimilation – Concert for people” together with music by Alvin Lucier, Michel … Read more…