Petr Mečkovský

This year's first concert by the Brno Contemporary Orchestra from the Auscultation series was entitled Gastro (Cuisine), or Dinner for Magdalena Dobromila Rettig (1785-1845). On Sunday, 2 February, the orchestra performed two compositions, or rather performances and happenings by Ondřej Adámek (*1979), who also conducted the pieces, in the dining room of the Masaryk Student House. This was a fairly unusual situation for the audience, when conductor Pavel Šnajdr did not take his place at the head of the orchestra.  more

The fourth concert in the Brno Philharmonic's Philharmonic at Home subscription series, subtitled Metamorphoses and conducted by Dennis Russell Davies, was dedicated to works by Joseph Haydn, Antonín Rejcha and Richard Strauss. Pianist Ivan Ilić was originally scheduled to appear as soloist in Rejcha's Piano Concerto, but for health reasons he cancelled the concert. Jan Bartoš promptly took over, enabling the audience to hear the original programme on Thursday 30 January at the Besední dům.  more

The Brno Philharmonic's New Year's concert on 1 January at the Janáček Theatre is already a well-established tradition. This year was no exception, and the orchestra, led by conductor Michel Tabachnik, gave a performance consisting mainly of works by Johann Strauss the Younger. This was the Brno Philharmonic Orchestra's show opening the 'Strauss Year'. After all, 2025 is the 200th anniversary of the birth of the composer, dubbed the king of waltzes. Strauss's compositions were accompanied by works by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Richard Strauss and Dimitri Shostakovich.  more

Christmas in Brno also means the traditional pre-Christmas concert of the Brno Contemporary Orchestra (BCO), this time entitled From America to Tuřany. It took place on 18th December and after a one-year break it returned to the Sokol Hall in Tuřany. The BCO, conducted by Pavel Šnajdr, performed works by Mauricio Kagel, Steve Reich, Trevor Grahl and, as always, Miloslav Kabeláč. Appearing together with the orchestra were four singers, Aneta Podracká Bendová, Kornél Mikecz, Michal Kuča and Martin Kotulan. At the end of the first half, Pavel Šnajdr set aside his baton and clapped the beat, joined by Petr Hladík.  more

The now world-famous Swedish band Dirty Loops finished their autumn European tour on Saturday, 30 November at Brno's Metro Music Bar. The band featured on the programme of the seventeenth annual Groove Brno funk, soul and jazz festival. The virtuoso trio, consisting of Jonah Nilsson - vocals and keyboards, Henrik Linder - bass guitar and Aron Mellergård - drums, are famous for their flawless technical proficiency, sophisticated original compositions and cover versions of well-known numbers, especially pop songs. However, these songs are often reharmonised in their arrangements and the style is more a combination of disco, pop and jazz fusion. To avoid having to resort to using pre-recorded backing tracks, the trio was joined on tour by keyboardist and vocalist Kristian Kraftling.  more

Leoš Janáček's (1854-1928) Moravian national opera Jenůfa was brought to Brno for the Janáček Brno 2024 festival by the Moravian Theatre Olomouc in a co-production with the Janáček Opera NdB. Rather than using the Czech title Její pastorkyňa, the production team, headed by director Veronika Kos Loulová, decided to stage the work as Jenůfa, the name under which it is performed abroad. On Wednesday, 20 November, five days after its première in Olomouc, the audience at the Mahen Theatre could also see the latest domestic take on Janáček's most widely performed opera. The musical staging of the significantly modified original version from 1904 was the work of conductor Anna Novotná Pešková, and the main roles were played by Barbora Perná (Jenůfa), Eliška Gattringerová (Kostelnička), Josef Moravec (Laca Klemeň) and Roman Hasymau (Števa Buryja).  more

The final concert of this year's season of the Brno Philharmonic was devoted to works by Antonín Dvořák and Jean Sibelius at the Janáček Theatre. On Thursday, 20 June, Danish conductor Michael Schønwandt, who had not appeared before a Brno audience since January last year, took the lead of the Philharmonic. In the first half of the programme, the orchestra was accompanied by violinist Alexander Sitkovetsky.  more

The concert with the subtitle Haydn and Shostakovich in G Minor closed the Philharmonia at Home subscription series on Thursday 16 May at the Besední dům. It was also the last concert of the 2023/24 season (not counting Friday's reprise), with the Brno Philharmonic led by its chief conductor Dennis Russell Davies. In the second half of the evening the orchestra was accompanied by singers Jana Šrejma Kačírková (soprano) and Jiří Služenko (bass). As the title of the concert implies, the dramaturgy juxtaposed works by Joseph Haydn and Dimitri Shostakovich, which are almost exclusively linked only by the key in which they were written.  more

With a concert called Ensemble Inégal: Yesterday at the church of St. John, Zelenka opened the 31st edition of the Easter Festival of Sacred Music, this time with the suffix Terroir. This slightly mysterious word, which is popularly used in connection with wine, comes from the Latin word for land or soil, and carries the sum of all the influences, especially the natural conditions of a particular location and on the plants grown there. This term is thus metonymically transferred to the programme of this year's VFDH, as it consists exclusively of works by Czech authors, thus complementing the ongoing Year of Czech Music.  more