Festivals of classical music in the Czech Republic.

Currently as many as two hundred festivals of classical music take place in the Czech Republic every year, thirty-six in Prague alone. Our brief chronological overview can only hint at all the outstanding music that you can encounter in the Czech Lands throughout the year, and not only in Prague and other big towns. Even smaller but architecturally notable places such as Litomysl, Kromeriz, Cesky Krumlov and many others have a rich musical tradition that is gradually being revived in local festivals. The following selection is offered as an inspiration for visitors to the Czech Republic.

2nd-6th March 2008, Brno

The Exposition of New Music (www.enh.cz)

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Focused on contemporary music, the Exposition is part of the International Brno Music Festival (see below). The aim of the Exposition of New Music is to give audiences an opportunity to get to know current ideas and trends in contemporary music at home and abroad, and to provide musical experiences that visitors rarely have the chance to encounter in normal concert life elsewhere. The festival is always conceived in terms of a particular theme, and the titles of the different years in themselves convey the difference between the music presented and normal production (1994: New Pulsation, 1996: Against the Current, 2005: Pleasure of Different hearing, 2007: So what ...? A Non-academic approach), and an unusual focus in terms of content (1995: Teatromusica, 1998: Unexpected Meetings, 2002: Roots in Rock, 2003: Echoes of Nature). The programmes are built on the participation of top international musicians and ensembles. The Exposition of New Music aspires to be a kind of counterweight to commercialised culture and the museum-like concept of conventional concert life. It puts the emphasis on original creativity and seeks to reveal the links between contemporary currents of thought. This year's 21st festival, entitled Between. Pop and Non-Pop, is designed to show that contemporary techniques of composition and the new technical equipment are erasing the hitherto apparently impermeable borders between genres.

29th March-6th April 2008, Prague

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Prague Premieres (www.pragueprermeres.eu)

As early as the 1950s festivals were founded in Prague, Brno, Ostrava, and Pilsen to showcase new pieces by domestic authors. Their main problem was the absence of the chance to compare these with foreign work, and to add to their difficulties, from 1990 orchestral premieres were ruled out for financial reasons. The Czech Philharmonic has tried to rectify the situation since 2004 by organising the spring festival known as Prague Premieres. The first two years of the festival were devoted to a cross-section of Czech, above all orchestral music from the past decade. Since its third year the festival has always presented several dozen compositions by Czech and foreign composers in all age groups and with different stylistic and intellectual orientations written in the last five years and not yet performed in Prague. In 2006 the programme included work by Czech, German, Austrian, Belgian, Luxembourgeois and Dutch composers, while the 2007 festival was focussed on the Northern Lands, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, and this year we shall have a chance to compare domestic music with new pieces by Belgian, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Swiss composers.

12th May-4th June 2008, Prague

The Prague Spring (www.festival.cz)

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The oldest, biggest and best attended of Czech festivals, the Prague Spring has become a national institution just like the Prague National Theatre and the Czech Philharmonic, which organised the festival's first year to mark the 50th anniversary of its own founding and with the National Theatre's opera has continued to be one of its main pillars. It starts every year on the day of the death of Bedrich Smetana, the 12th of May, with a performance of My Country and ends in the first days of June. Over the last sixty years its concerts have offered all the best of Czech music and also the most important works of world musical repertoire interpreted by outstanding Czech and foreign musicians. From the innumerable stars we mention at least the following names: Sviatoslav Richter, Lorin Maazel, Herbert von Karajan, Mstislav Rostropovich, Boris Pergamenshchikov, Lucie Popp, Kim Borg, Sir Colin Davis, Maurice Andre, Dmitri Sitkovetsky, Leonid Kogan, Paul Klecki, Gustav Leonhardt, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Alfred Brendel, Heinrich Schiff, Leopold Stokowski, Arthur Honegger, and Arthur Rubinstein. This year, apart from the domestic stars performers will include Garrick Ohlson, Edita Gruberova, Nigel Kennedy, Alfred Brendel, Julia Fischer ...

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Many works have been premiered here, some of them specially commissioned by the festival. The festival itself is preceded by an international performers' competition, and its finale and concert of laureates are part of the festival programme. This year we shall be hearing the flower of young oboists and clarinettists. The history of the Prague Spring is presented in detail on its Internet page and in a lengthy publication marking the sixtieth anniversary of its birth.

19th May-9th June 2008, Ostrava

Janacek's May (www.janackuvmaj.cz)

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North Moravia's showcase festival with a musicological conference and associated Generation competition for young artists (now only composers), was founded in 1972. At the turn of the 20th/21st century it acquired a better base with the improvement in the standard of the local Janacek Conservatory and the opening of a new Ostrava University with a department of music. The music of Czech and foreign classics and above all Leos Janacek forms the core of the festival programmes, but tried and tested pieces by contemporary composers are also played and one concert is always devoted to the winning works in the national composing competition Generation. Jazz and other musical genres are also on the menu.

31st May-29th June 2008, South Moravian towns

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Concentus Moraviae (www.concentus-moraviae.cz)

This festival has been held since 1996, usually in June, in almost 20 South Moravian towns (with the exception of Brno) and sometimes across the border of neighbouring Austria. Every year it has a special theme. This year the programme is focussing on the musical life in the Visegrad region (i.e. the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Poland, which have signed an agreement on cultural co-operation), from the Middle Ages to the beginning of the 19th century. The theme, "Old Music of Visegrad", will be developed at several different levels. Czech, Slovak, Hungarian and Polish composers will be presented, the musical life in the historic capitals--Prague, Bratislava, Budapest and Cracow (later Warsaw)--will be mapped, and attention will also be devoted to music centres outside the capitals, including monasteries. The newly formed Visegrad Baroque Orchestra will be playing an important role here.

21st--26th June 2008, Kromeriz

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Forfest (www.forfest.cz)

The collapse of the communist government meant that from 1990 festivals of sacred music began to appear. One of the first was the Kromeriz Forfest in June, striving to put spiritual content back into contemporary music and fine arts. As expressed in the words of a leader member of the festival's organising committee the violinist, composer and teacher at the Church Conservatory in Kromeriz--Zdena Vaculovicova: "The policy of the festival is to highlight the trends in Czech and world art that embody elements of a new spiritual charge and have the power to reintegrate the shattered image of the post-modern era at a high level. Today there is a lot of talk of a kind of transitional period in art, a lack of clarity, a deliberate obscurity. The history of art teaches us that it has often been precisely at such times that works are created which turn out to be basic and fundamental. "It is a festival that involves a high proportion of young musicians, and many premieres in all kinds of genres including the experimental, The appeal of the festival is enhanced by the beauty of the venues: the Arbishop's Chateau, the Chateau Gardens and the churches of Kromeriz. This year's 30 festival concerts will be held in 10 different settings.

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4th-8th June 2008, Olomouc

Olomouc Song Festival (www.festamusicale.cz)

The large number of excellent children's choirs in the Czech Lands led to the establishment of many children's choir festivals, most of them competitive. In 1972 what is now the best known was founded--the Olomouc Song Festival which from 1990 was gradually transformed into an international competition festival involving all kinds of choir. Children's, boys, youth and adult choirs appear here every year. More than 150 choirs with many thousands of singers regularly participate. This year the obligatory pieces are works by Gesualdo, Verdi, Bruckner and Petr Eben. There will be a series of concerts for the public and appearances by choirs at Sunday services in the Cathedral of St. Maurice, but competition performances are also open to all.

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18th June--5th July 2008, Litomysl

The Smetana's Litomysl International Opera Festival (www.smetanovalitomysl.cz)

Originally founded in 1949, this is one of the oldest of Czech festivals, but in its first three decades it was held at irregular intervals and its importance declined. From the 1990s, however, it has been held annually and has become ever more extensive and diverse. The main setting for festival events is the superb Renaissance chateau in which Bedrich Smetana was born the son of a maltster at the chateau brewery. Opera productions and major concerts are presented in the 2nd Chateau Courtyard, which is equipped with a sliding roof in case of rain. Most of the events today are concert productions of various genres, including new world concert premieres. The festival this year is the 50th since its founding. The programme will feature Bedrich Smetana's The Bartered Bride and Libuse presented by the Prague National Theatre, Verdi's Nabucco, Rossini's The Barber of Seville, Sergei Prokofiev's ballet Romeo and Juliet, Smetana's My Country performed by the Czech Philharmonic and conducted by Libor Pesek, two concerts of chamber works by Smetana, Antonin Dvorak's Requiem, a joint concert of the choirs Schola Grego-riana Pragensis and the Japanese Buddhist monks Gyosan-ryii Tendai shomyo and much else.

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27th-29th June 2008, Jihlava and other places in the vicinity

Festival of Choral Music (www.fsujihlava.com)

In the history of modern choral singing in the Czech Lands, starting in the 1860s, we will find many events of festival type. The oldest that still in existence is Smetana's Jabkenice, founded in 1924. The Jihlava Festival of Vocal Art, a centralised national event from 1958, was later renamed more accurately The Festival of Choral Music. At first it was a non-competitive showcase of the best amateur Czechoslovak choirs of all types, which then gradually changed into an international festival with occasional appearances by professional ensembles as well. The nature of the festival programmes, which open with a concert in the Jihlava Cathedral of St. Ignatius, has also changed. At last year's 50th festival the Vox iuvenalis Brno choir performed Arvo Part's Te Deum. This year's festival will continue in the now traditional format including an international composers' competition. The winning pieces in its 9th year, called "Jihlava 2008", will be played at the 51st Festival of Choral Music.

28th June-7th July 2008, Cesky Krumlov

The Cesky Krumlov Festival of Chamber Music (www.ckrumlov.cz/fekohu)

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The South Bohemian town of Cesky Krumlov, which is listed as a UNESCO monument, boasts one of the largest and most beautiful Czech chateaux with a famous round tower. Under the tower, in historic interiors such as the 17th-century Baroque theatre or the Masquing Hall decorated with scenes of entertainment in centuries past, a festival that animates these rooms with the music of bygone ages and sometimes with contemporary music has now been taking place in the early summer for 22 years. The musical direction and personal participation of the grand old man of Czech violin virtuosity, Josef Suk, in itself suggests the high standard of the festival (his joint concert of works by Antonin Dvorak and Josef Suk with four other top musicians from last year's Cesky Krumlov Festival will be reprised this year on the 29th of May at the Prague Spring.) In line with established tradition this year's festival will again be including a "Baroque Night", in which for a short while the centuries will be rolled back and the old life will return to the former residence of the powerful Rozmberk dynasty. During the four-hour programme visitors will see and hear musicians and singers in Medieval dress, and will be served with Medieval delicacies, and they are encouraged to come in historical costume themselves.

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2nd-7th July 2008, Pardubice

IFAS International Festival of University Choirs (www.ifas.cz)

Pardubice became a centre of the choral movement thanks to the activities of the choirmaster Vlastislav Novak, who founded a number of Pardubice choirs and choral festivals. The oldest and most famous is the IFAS Festival of University Choirs. Its first year was 1968, when the temporary relaxation of communist totalitarian control meant that several West European choirs could take part as well. It was a great success, but after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia it was forbidden in the following year and in 1970 had to be held under the title Festival of University Choirs with the obligatory participation of a choir from the Soviet Union. Subsequently it proved possible to organise it every two years (even years) with the original name. Currently it is an important international platform for university choirs, many of them outstanding including the Pardubice University Arts Ensemble, which was the first organiser of the IFAS Festival.

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17th July-19th August 2008, Prague

The Summer Festival of Early Music (www.collegiummariananum.cz)

Founded in 2000, this international music festival seeks to enrich the cultural life of our time with the music of centuries long past. It has been initiating a search for pieces that have hitherto been outside our angle of vision or have not been given the attention they deserve. The festival presents music by little-known Baroque French, Italian and Spanish composers, as well as the better-known such as Samuel Capricornus, Johann Jacob Froberger, Johann Heinrich Schmelzer, Jan Krtitel Krumpholz, Jan Ladislav Dusik and great names like Jean Philippe Rameau, Francois Couperin, Christoph Wilibald Gluck, Antonio Vivaldi, Johann Sebastian Bach, Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Apart from the foreign guest ensembles and soloists, the festival has a "core" group in the form of the instrumental, vocal and dance ensemble Collegium Marianum, whose artistic director, the flautist Jana Semeradova, also manages the entire festival and heads the Prague Tyn Higher Vocational School, lectures at the Academy of Early Music at the Masaryk University in Brno and pursues her own research work. Concerts and productions presented in the picturesque historical settings of the Brevnov Monastery, for example, the Troja Chateau, the interiors of lesser known Prague churches and the superb exteriors of the Ledeburk or Vrtbov Gardens, all regularly meet with a very warm response. This year's festival will include a music-theatre project based on Moliere's comedy, Le Medecin malgre lui produced by the French theatre company La Fabrique a theatre. The renowned counter-tenor Philippe Jaroussky will also be appearing, and a concert of Spanish Baroque and Renaissance music performed by the Spanish ensemble Armoniosi Concerti is another treat to look forward to. Baroque Early Evenings, a series of concerts of early music in the historical setting of the fomer Servite monastery in Melantrich St. in Prague, is associated with the festival.

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18th July-23rd August 2008, Cesky Krumlov

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International Music Festival Cesky Krumlov (www.festivalkrumlov.cz, ww.auviex.cz)

The festival is in some ways a free continuation of the Krumlov Chamber Music Festival that precedes it. Music of the Baroque and Classicist eras forms the core of its programme. In the coming, 17th festival season it will be offering music from the Gothic to the present in twenty-eight programmes in twelve venues in and around Cesky Krumlov. In the first six days of the festival the South Bohemian and some outstanding soloists from abroad will be presenting Verdi's opera The Force of Destiny in an outdoor theatre with revolving auditorium, in the Masquing Hall the Prague ensemble Ensemble Inegal will be performing Baroque music and there will be recitals by the pianists Geza Anda and Martin Kasik, the Skampa Quartet and others, the phenomenal Israeli clarinettist Sharon Khan will be playing with the Moravian Philharmonic in the Riding School, and the Brewery Garden will be the venue for both the very popular Irish Night and this year a Greek Night, both with a chance to savour national gastronomic specialities. The programme in the Baroque Theatre has yet to be confirmed.

21st-24th August 2008, Kuks

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Theatrum Kuks (www.theatrum.zde.cz)

An annual festival of Baroque theatre, opera and music that has been taking place since 2002, always at the end of September, in the whole chateau complex of Count Sporck in the East Bohemian village of Kuks between Dvur Kralove and Jaromer. The programme is unusually broad and diverse. Last year for example it hosted Comoedien-Haus with a production of the Opera about a Chimney attributed to Karel Loos, Georg Philipp Teleman's opera Pimpinone was staged in statuary exhibition and Frantisek Xaver Brixi's humorous Erat unum cantor bonus in the refectory. The Church of the Holy Trinity was the venue for a recital of songs from the Bozan's famous hymnbook The Nightingale of Paradise, a concert of organ music and a concert by the folk group the Michal Hromek Consort. Flute concertos were played in the Baroque pharmacy and on the cascade staircase, and Baroque guitar in the Gallery of Wines. Since the deadline for applications from ensembles who wish to participate in the festival is the 15th of February, the precise programme will only be drawn up after that date. We already know that during the festival the facade of the today no longer existing Sporck chateau building itself (finally demolished in 1901) will be conjured up by virtual representation, and that water music will be played on the River Labe, which flows through the extensive chateau grounds.

End of August--beginning of September 2009, Ostrava

Ostrava Days (www.ocnmh.cz)

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Currently this is the biggest and most important festival of contemporary music, orientated to progressive European and American avant-garde movements (see CMQ 2,3/07). The Ostrava Days take place as biennale in odd years and are already an internationally acclaimed platform of contemporary musical life for both composers and performers. The week-long festival follows and is integrated with a three-week course for composers focused on work with an orchestra. In addition to its "resident" orchestra, the Janacek Philharmonic, the festival hosts a range of often outstanding, mainly foreign soloists and groups. The festival's own Ostrava Band, an international ensemble originally planned purely for festival purposes, has already been successfully developing its activities outside the festival, for example in foreign tours. On the 23rd of May 2008 it will be appearing at a Prague Spring concert.

12th September-1st October 2008, Prague

The Prague Autumn (www.pragueautumn.cz)

This festival may be regarded as the very popular but more modest counterpart of the Prague Spring. Each year it offers more than twenty orchestral concerts in the Dvorak Hall of the Rudolfinum, with programmes that include the most important piano, violin and cello concertos. It collaborates closely with Czech Radio in three main areas: the regular participation of the Czech Radio Symphony Orchestra, radio broadcasts of the festival concerts and also appearances by two radio orchestras from other European countries each year. The most frequent guests are the BBC Radio Symphony Orchestra and German orchestras. The festival always concludes with a performance of Dvorak's Concerto for Cello and Orchestra in B minor.

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2nd half of September 2008, Prague

The St. Wenceslas Festival (http://svs.sdh.cz)

Since 1993 the Sacred Music Society has been organising the St. Wenceslas Festival, which culminates on the anniversary of the murder of the Czech Prince Wenceslas on the 28th of September. In addition to oratorios by the Baroque masters the festival concerts include new pieces by contemporary composers. Reverence for St. Wenceslas, one of the most famous figures in Czech history, has led to the holding of St. Wenceslas festivals in other places as well. Outstanding among them is the St. Wenceslas Music Festival (www.shf.cz), held since 2004 in September and October in 24 places in the Moravian Silesian region.

19th September-4th October 2008, Brno

The Moravian Autumn (www.mhf-brno.cz)

From 1995 an annual festival was held in Brno under the title Brno Musical May. This festival resembled the Prague Spring in title, dates and content. In 1966, during the brief period of relaxation of the centralised totalitarian control of culture, a radical change was made--the festival was moved to the end of September and beginning of October and was renamed the International Brno Music Festival, with the programme conceived in a newly thematic way and a musicological colloquium being added. The first year was devoted to Bohuslav Martinu, as was the festival in 1990. Leos Janacek, who lived and worked in Brno, receives the greatest attention, and the Brno festivals in major anniversary years of his death (1928) have been devoted to him. He will also be the focus of the coming festival, called Music of Passion and Resistance. Since 1996 the festival has been known as the Moravian Autumn and become part of the newly conceived Brno International Music Festival, which also includes the Easter Festival of Sacred Music and the Exposition of New Music.

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September-Novemebr 2008, Prague

The International Festival of Concert Melodrama (www.concert-melodrama.com)

The launch of the festival in 2000 was connected with the celebrations of the 150th anniversary of the birth and commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the death of Zdenek Fibich, the pioneer of the modern Czech concert melodrama and author of the only trilogy of stage melodramas in world musical repertoire, Hipodamie. Many new compositions are presented at the festival each year, and it is combined with a competition in the performance of melodrama and creative workshops for performers.

End of September--mid-November 2008, Prague

Strings of Autumn (www.strunypodzimu.cz)

A festival orientated to jazz and classical, tradition and experiment. The nine festival concerts are usually scheduled at weekly intervals from the end of September until mid-November. The festival organisers promise to publicise the programme for this year in May. In general framework it will be similar to last year's, which for example included a concert of Handel areias, Old Russian liturgical chant, an Arab-Andalusian Nouba feast, jazz music, a conceptual project on the boundaries of drama, dance and music using new technical means, duets for violin and cello by Maurice Ravel, Zoltan Kodaly and Bohuslav Martinu, traditional Portuegese fado and a multi-genre concert by the Bester Quartet. The last two concerts were held in a new concert venue known as the Prague Crossroads and created by reconstruction of St. Anne's Church in the historic centre of Prague.

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In conclusion I should like to add that you can find a more comprehensive view of Czech festivals at the Czech musical listings service Muzikontakt, which provides constantly updated information on its Internet page at www.muzikus.cz/muzikontakt.

You will also find brief information about some of the festival settings mentioned above, which are often very attractive and of great historical interest, in the article The Music-Loving Tourist's Guide to the Czech Republic in the 2/07 issue of this magazine.