Konvergence.

The composers' association KONVERGENCE is one of a number of groups of young musicians orientated to contemporary music that are particularly appealing because they give concerts that strike a balance between music written by their members and music by other "outside" composers. All these groups have been creating platforms that are relatively independent of official and established structures. The effect has undoubtedly been to enrich the music scene with performance of works by relative unknowns at the beginning of their careers, and also by famous names whose music has for one reason or another almost never been played here.

Konvergence was founded in the spring of 2002 by students at HAMU (The Music Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague): Roman Pallas, Tomas Palka, Jan Rybar and Ondrej Stochl. Since their first concerts at the Forfest in Kromeriz they have achieved a great deal, and they still seem to be forging ahead.

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On the one hand you play pieces by members of the association, and on the other pieces by other composers? Which other composers?

OS: For our concert programmes we draw on three sources. First our own pieces, and then music by interesting young composers who are completely unknown to us personally, but whom we know of from composing courses, for example, and whose work appeals to us. The third source is music by well-known composers rarely performed in this country. For example, our concerts have included music by L. Berio, P. Boulez, G. Crumb, M. Feldman, G, Ligeti, some of the pieces performed for the first time in this country. For instance we were the first Czech group to play Feldman's Piano and String Quartet and Crumb's Black Angels.

What is the connecting link between you as composers? Would it be meaningful to think of you as having some kind of common programme or direction?

TP: The interface is simply in our joint concert activities. Otherwise we each have rather different musical interests, but that has a positive effect in the sense that the individual concerts don't follow the same stylistic line all the time. We try to make sure that every concert has a slightly different focus within the framework of what we all agree on.

OS: There are points of contact between any two of us. You definitely couldn't say that there was any one of us who nothing in common with any of the others. But on the other hand we certainy don't have some common compositional programme we would all put our names to and commit ourselves to for future years. For example, for me and for Tomas Palka, Morton Feldman has been a strong influence: we've played him and we shall certainly go on playing him, and most of his pieces have never yet been performed here. Me and Jan, on the other hand, share a fondness for Holan.

JR: I like Xenakis, for example, and so I've persuaded the group to rehearse a piece of his for this year's season. Another composer who is important to me is Ligeti, and we've played him at our concerts as well. Roman Pallas likes G. Crumb, for instance, and so we've also played some of his music. So you see each of us has his preferences, and on the basis of these we try to put together concerts that work (the different pieces mustn't be at odds with each other) but are also diverse and don't consist of pieces that are all from one school of composition, which would be a mistake.

Do you see gaps in the work of other Czech contemporary music ensembles that you would like to fill?

OS: The gap we see is precisely in the way concerts are put together. We try to ensure that concerts are compact and coherent and have a certain line of development, that the pieces played at a concert should have one or more common denominators, in subject, stylistic affinity and so on. We want our concerts to give the impression of a natural whole with a comprehensible dynamic structure, and not just a random display in which the pieces get in each other's way and ultimately none of them sound the way they deserve to sound.

Do you really believe that the structure of concerts, as you describe it, is quite so important? Is it really necessary that the pieces should somehow follow on from one another and make up a whole? Doesn't that approach involve a certain tack of respect for the individual pieces, and undermine their independence and right to be heard on their own terms?

OS: I think that's the whole point, Music of this kind is something that audiences often find remote, and if the listener is to have the chance to penetrate a little way further into its work and enjoy it properly, it is absolutely essential that we should keep on marinading him in a single substance for a reasonable length of time. Ultimately, pieces are always placed in some order or other at concerts and there is no reason not to try and turn the fact to advantage.

When you have these kinds of educational and even missionary tendencies, do you try in any way to project them for example into your programme materials, perhaps in the form of a deeper and more informed commentary than is usual?

OS: We do try, When we prayed the Piano and String Quartet, the programme contained about a page of material not just on when and how the piece was written, but also with comments on what the listener should and should not expect from the music. This is music that expresses a state. and not a process, and the listener should know that and not keep waiting for some major change, for example, For Black Angels Prof. Vaclav Kucera has written us an outstanding commentary--Information on the background of the piece, what it was reacting to, quotations, what it contains and so on. I think listeners will appreciate it.

Let us stay with your activities to date. t seem to remember that apart from normal concerts you have worked with Czech Radio.

TP: That was a concert broadcast live on Studio 1, in April, with the programme made up of our pieces and Feldman's I Met Heine on the Rue Furstenberg. It was actually a kind of presentation of Konvergence to a wider audience, and included an interview on "who we are and what we want".

OS: Apart from that we have done four programmes with Wanda Dobrovska, where we played recordings of our pieces and talked about them. It's probably only a matter of time before we do more radio work. The problem is that there are only two programmes that we could appear on (Studio 1 and Musica moderna), and of course we're not the only people who are interested in the chance.

What are you planning this year?

OS: We are concentrating mainly on our concert series in Prague. We're rehearsing for a total of four concerts, and one will present a spatial composition by members of the association and Gerald Resch, a recent graduate of the Vienna Academy who works somewhere between structuralism and spectral music. As far as more famous names are concerned, as we have said already we are rehearsing something by Xenakis, Roman has plucked up courage and is planning to rehearse Crumb's Makrokosmos II, and David Kalhous will be playing at least the first book of Ligeti's Etudes. We shall also be playing Feldman's Viola in my Life at the "spatial" concert I mentioned, Lutoslawski's Grave. Kopelent's 5th String Quartet and P. Manoury's Trio.

TP: Otherwise. we shall be appearing in Bratislava, for example at the Melos-Etos festival orgainised by the students of composition there (apart from a piece by Jan Rybar we shall be playing string quartets by V. Janarcekova and M. Kopelent) and we shall also be playing in Brno at the Exposition of New Music, where we shall probably be repeating Black Angels, among other things.

Are there any young composers whose music you like to play but who are outside the association?

OS: We have played a quartet by Jana Kmitova, a piece by Marian Lejava, and an interesting composition by Katarina Rosenberger. The Polo Michal Pawelek is also very interesting, and now seems to be beginning to make a name for himself outside his own country. We shall definitely be returning to these names in the future and we are already preparing something along those lines for the coming season. We are also planning to work with the Austrian association Gegenklang, which was founded by the same G. Resch we mentioned before.

TP: We are also including music by the young composers that we meet on courses in Cesky Krumlov. This is an important source of contacts.

You are all able instrumentalists, but you still often need other performers. Are you trying to create a kind of circle of people who work with you on a closer basis?

OS: Without a doubt. For this year we have already formed an ensemble that will appear under the name Corona and consists of flute, clarinet, string quartet, percussion and piano. If we need other instruments we have a circle of friends who are willing to co-operate, and we are also prepared to exploit the repertoire of friendly soloists for example in last year's season the clarinettist Karel Dohnal appeared at one of our concerts and played Berio's Sequenza IX.

Finally, I'll try and provoke you a little. I don't seem to meet many students of composition at concerts of contemporary music (not even to speak of other music students). You might naively think that almost everyone would go to nearly everything ... So who exactly is supposed to go to the concerts, when they don't even interest the processionals?

JR: Anybody at all, and especially people outside the field.

OS: It naturally depends a great deal on resources for publicity--we more or less cope as far as the concerts are concerned with foundation money, but there isn't enough for any really large scale promotion. In any case, although we want to make the music we play accessible to the ordinary listener, there are limits. We would certainly never do any sort of variety show with dancers, floodlights and so on. In other words, we're not prepared to lure audiences with something that is actually irrelevant to the music.

(Note: R. Pallas was also present at the interview and generally murmured agreement with his colleagues)

Roman Pallas (1978)

Studied piano and composition at the conservatory in Teplice, and since 1999 has studied composition at HAMU (Music Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts) in the class of I. Loudova. He also works as the choirmaster of the Litomerice girls' choir Puellae cantantes. His sources of inspiration include the minimalists, G. Crumb and F. Zappa.

Tomas Palka (1978)

After secondary school he studied composition at the Brno Conservatory under P. Novak, and he is currently studying at HAMU under M. Kopelent. He performs as a pianist in the orchestra of the National Theatre in Brno, and as violinist with the Musica Figuralis orchestra, and is also active in the Prague Philharmonic choir. He inclines to a static flow of musical events at lower dynamic levels.

Jan Rybar (1981)

He studied piano and composition (VI. Tichy) at the Jan Neruda High School in Prague, and is now a master's student at HAMU in M. Slavicky's composition class. He is interested in the different types of modal technique and in putting them together with sonic qualities, and pays particular attention to composition for voice.

Ondrej Stochl (1975)

Studied viola at the Prague Cconservatory, where he also started to study composition. In 2003 he graduated in composition at HAMU as a pupil of M. Kopelent. He now works as a teacher at a Basic Arts School in Hostivar and at the conservatory in Teplice. His musical idiom rests on an atonal vertical and emphasis on timbre, and his aim is the expression of a state through music--the illusion of musical timelessness.