Contemporary Music at Prague Spring Festival 2023
Primes, St Matthew's Fair, Fog In The Alpine Valleys Or Housefly As Themes For New Pieces Of Music Commissioned By Prague Spring Festival.
At five May concerts, the audience of this year's Prague Spring Festival will hear nine world premieres. Four Czech male composers and two female composers were commissioned new works by the Festival which will be performed by Klangforum Wien under the baton of Peter Rundel as part of the second edition of the Prague Offspring weekend of contemporary music (May 26 and 27 at the DOX Centre for Contemporary Art in Holešovice). Two new compositions are also awaiting the entrants of the second round of the Prague Spring International Music Competition. Jan Kučera wrote a piece for trombone and piano, Ondřej Štochl for the viola competition category. The last world premiere will be performed at the concert of PKF — Prague Philharmonia with conductor Oksana Lyniv on May 28; this piece was written by composer and cellist Eduard Resatsch of the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra.
Connecting local artists with the international scene is one of the important missions of the Prague Spring Festival. We are proud that due to the Prague Offspring project, top rendition of works that we have commissioned from young Czech composers will be guaranteed by one of the world's best ensembles, says Prague Spring Festival Director Pavel Trojan.
This year, contemporary music at the Prague Spring Festival will show that it can be very innovative while tackling major social issues. Georg Friedrich Haas, the composer-in-residence of the Prague Offspring, says that he always took interest in politics and this is reflected in his music. The composition in vain written at the turn of the millennium was written against the background of the rise of the far right in Austria. The composition for drums and an ensemble Wer, wenn ich schriee, hörte mich... was written as a reaction to the conflict in Kosovo. The new composition by Jana Vöröšová Lunapark (The Amusement Park) suggests that not everything will be totally serious, with parts such as Autodrom (Motor-Racing Circuit), Labutě (Swans) or Horská dráha (Roller Coaster), says Prague Spring Festival Programme Director Josef Třeštík.
Naturally, the Prague Offspring will be the most generous platform for contemporary music which, in addition to two concerts of Klangforum Wien with conductor Peter Rundel, will also feature a discussion of leading personalities of contemporary music under the title How to Spring Off?, a discussion with the composer-in-residence of the Prague Offspring weekend George Friedrich Haas, a screening of Hyena with the composer's wife Mollena Williams-Haas in the title role, a public rehearsal of works by composition students from the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague and the Academy of Performing Arts in Brno: Milica Modrá, Noemi Savková and Matej Sloboda or a master class with members of Klangforum Wien for local musicians.
New Works at the Prague Offspring
After the Atlas mraků (Atlas of Clouds) which was premiered at the Prague Spring by the Bohemia Saxophone Quartet four years ago, and the composition Hra (The Game) which became a compulsory piece for entrants in the 2021 piano competition, the composer Jana Vöröšová comes with a work for a large ensemble.
Lunapark (The amusement park) offers a multifaceted image. A place where creaking can be heard and run-down attractions, magic for effect and glitz can be seen. Each of the attractions has a different trajectory of movement: swings have one, chain carousel has a different one and so do the swans. Lunapark is a very colourful but also very complex piece. I am glad that the composition will have its premiere at the DOX Centre for Contemporary Art because this venue really suits new music, says composer Jana Vöröšová in a mini documentary by Kateřina Hager.
Her Lunapark will be played on the first night of the Prague Offspring, along with the piece by George Friedrich Haas Wer, wenn ich schriee, hörte mich... or the Concerto for Piano and Orchestra by György Ligeti which will be played by a Finnish pianist Joonas Ahonen with Klangforum Wien. This and other works by the late Hungarian-Austrian composer György Ligeti are presented by the festival on the occasion of 100 years since his birth.
Another confrontation of the music by contemporary Czech composers and that of George Friedrich Haas is ready for the second night of the Prague Offspring on Saturday, May 27. In addition to the more than an hour-long piece entitled in vain which is an acknowledged masterpiece of the 21st century, Klangforum Wien will present five new compositions commissioned by the festival.
After the installation Cvrlikání/Twitter with crickets and a drone which could be seen by the audience of the last year's Prague Offspring in DOX in Holešovice, composer Matouš Hejl comes up with a piece for the orchestra. The fresh winner of the 2022 Theatre Critics Award for Music for the production of Opera Ibsen/Ghosts, he wrote Kývání (Pendulation) for Klangforum Wien.
The piece represents a model of a double pendulum – one of the simplest systems exhibiting chaotic behaviour – set to music. There is a paradox: there exists a precise description of the model by means of equations but a slight change in initial conditions, similar to the 'butterfly effect‘, results in an unpredictable behaviour of the system, explains the author Matouš Hejl.
František Chaloupka, composer of chamber and orchestral music, operas, installations and multimedia works, will be the debuting author at the Prague Spring Festival.
It is interesting to see the matter-of-factness of how we use the terms “classical” and “avant-garde“ and our uncompromising ways of distinguishing between them in terms of their meaning. Yet, these characteristics coexist side by side in musical and other works of art with such obviousness and organic interdependence that we are not able to distinguish them so clearly, explains František Chaloupka his motivation when composing his piece The Spectral Waltzer.
Last year, Pavel Šabacký was one of three students of Czech art colleges who were given the opportunity to consult their compositions with members of Klangforum Wien. On the basis of a short and intensive cooperation, the Austrian ensemble together with the Prague Spring Festival decided to contact Pavel Šabacký to write a new piece which will be presented as part of the upcoming Prague Offspring.
Although within a relatively short span, I put three elements which I personally find important, next to each other: a play with microtonality based on prime numbers, a solo clarinet whose melodies copy a free drawing (playing the clarinet was the final impulse for me to devote myself to music fulltime) and finally alternating colour units with cuts. Beneath this surface there are quotations of Dvorak's biblical song The Lord is My Shepherd which reminds me of my grandmother, to whom the piece is dedicated, says Pavel Šabacký, the author of Ishan't.
The new composition Pět barev alpské mlhy (Five Colours of Alpine Fog) by Michaela Pálka Plachká will already be the third composition to be performed at the festival. After compositions performed by the Convergence ensemble at the Convent of Saint Agnes in 2009 and 2014, the composer offered a work inspired by a mere view from the window of her current home.
From time to time, in the morning, the Alpine valley is covered by a thick fog. With the first rays of the sun, it begins to gradually fade away and I perceive this gradual unveiling as a parallel to certain crossroads in life when the future path is yet to be revealed. In the composition, this first corresponds to increasing gradation and thickening, from which pieces of melody are born which play with the harmonic material and show it in various contexts, says Michaela Pálka Plachká about her composition.
Czech-Austrian composer Šimon Voseček wrote Flies. Diptera for ensemble for the Prague Spring Festival and the Prague Offspring weekend of contemporary music. The winner of several Austrian State Scholarships for composition who has been living in Vienna for two decades, chose a text from the Czech version of the Wikipedia to describe his new piece:
The Diptera order (from the Greek “two wings”) is an order of insects that includes many species. A colloquial term for a large part of the representatives of the order is flies. A typical feature of the Diptera is that they have only a single pair of membranous wings. A striking feature of the Diptera is the enormous manoeuvrability of their flight.
Šimon Voseček is not unknown to the festival audience either. Four years ago, at the Prague Spring Festival, the PKF — Prague Philharmonia with conductor Ben Glassberg performed Hypnos, the recording of which was included on the selective CD entitled Prague Spring Festival vol. 1 Blue Edition published by Radioservis last year. Also during this year's Prague Offspring, microphones of Czech Radio will be present at the DOX Centre for Contemporary Art.
A world premiere will also take place during the PKF — Prague Philharmonia concert on May 28 in Rudolfinum. In addition to pieces by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Richard Strauss, it will feature a new work by a Ukrainian composer, cellist of the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra Eduard Resatsch Up in Flames on the verses by the poet Lina Kostenko. The soprano part will be performed by Ukrainian soprano Julia Tkachenko who mainly appears on Italian opera stages.
In my music, flames are conceived in the broadest sense – as flames of love and flames of war, says Eduard Resatsch. The fierceness of the flames suggests a kind of irrepressible energy, something that is internally nurtured by the essence of the musical cosmos, a living being who loves, breathes, cries, shouts, sings, breaks down, grows, develops and goes through constant changes either in the vacuum of silence or in the grip of noise.
The concert of PKF — Prague Philharmonia with Oksana Lyniv will be recorded by Czech Television in a co-production with the French television channel Mezzo.
The Prague Spring International Music Competition also continues in its long tradition: entrants will study a newly written piece as a compulsory part of the repertoire of the second round. This year, for viola, it will be a piece by Ondřej Štochl Il sogno fragile. For the trombone category, Jan Kučera has written a piece for the competition and called it the Prague Bagatelle.
This is a follow-up to my piece for the trumpet and piano The Joker that I wrote for this competition in 2009, says composer and conductor Jan Kučera. While The Joker was cheerful and playful, the Prague Bagatelle unfolds in a more serious vein. A short piece for the trombone and piano which I wrote as an exercise as a student of the Prague Conservatory in 1997 and which was never performed, served as a thematic basis. I wanted the musicians to show not only their technical skill but above all their overall musicality, he adds.
He reviewed the solo part thanks to consultations with the first trombone player of the Czech Philharmonic, Robert Kozánek.
Georg Friedrich Haas Residency
During the residency at the Prague Offspring, two compositions will be performed by an Austrian composer living in the USA, George Friedrich Haas. On Friday, May 26, it would be Wer, wenn ich schriee, hörte mich...for drums and ensemble and on Saturday, May 27, the legendary in vain. Klangforum Wien premiered the work in 2000 with conductor Sylvain Cambreling in Cologne. Since then, it has been performed by the London Sinfonietta and the Karajan Academy associated with the Berlin Philharmonic with Simon Rattle. Haas wrote this monumental work in response to the rise of the far right in Austria.
Before I wrote in vain, I was an unimportant composer which I did not really mind. Of course, it is fantastic for the composer when the members of the orchestra and the audience are moved by the rendition of his composition. This is without a doubt the most wonderful experience you can have as a composer. I was lucky enough to have experienced this several times and I believe it will happen again thanks to Klangforum Wien, said Georg Friedrich Haas about the Prague performance.
I am really grateful for the invitation to Prague because my ties to this city are very strong. First of all, it is due to the composer Alois Hába who is one of my all-time favourites. In 1987, I tried to carry out research in the field of quarter-tone music in Prague which, however, was virtually impossible under communism. And then there is the importance of Prague. I often remind my students that, in terms of cultural life, in the 1920s it was at least as important as Vienna or Berlin, adds Georg Friedrich Haas.
CD The Prague Spring Festival – Blue Edition II.
The second CD from the Prague Spring – Blue Edition collection is released. The album contains pieces performed at the Prague Offspring in May 2022 when the ensemble Klangforum Wien with conductor Bas Wiegers played at the DOX Centre for Contemporary Art in Holešovice. In addition to Spleen III by Olga Neuwirth, the CD contains works commissioned by the Prague Spring Festival: Jakub Rataj: Fade No More, Lucie Vítková: Sen ostatních (Dream of Others), Konstantin Heuer: peripety – dissolution, Ian Mikyska: Dissolving; Settling, Adrián Demoč: Súzvuk a chvenie (Consonance and Vibration) and Martin Smolka: Andělské schody (Angel Steps). The CD is released by Radioservis based on the recordings by the Czech Radio. In addition to the physical media, the works will be available through Spotify or iTunes streaming services.
