Interviews
The Janáček Theatre will celebrate its fiftieth anniversary on Friday by performing the premiere of Leoš Janáček’s opera Jenufa. The director of the performance is the current director of the National Theatre Brno – Martin Glaser. We spoke together about his production as well as the changes the theatre has gone through under his management and where the festivals Theatre World and Janáček Brno were heading. more
The need for a new symphonic and cantate concert hall in Brno is first mentioned in a dictionary of music by Pazdírek in 1929. Since that time this issue has come to the surface in more frequent intervals, fuelled by the existence and needs of the philharmonic orchestra, by the growth and requirements of the symphonic audience and also by the expectations of foreign visitors of Janáček’s city. There were different stages of realization of projects at Žerotínovo square (currently Bílý dům), Joliot Curie square (what is now the last section of Šumavská street with the commercial high rises), Obránců míru street (currently the ombudsman’s palace on Údolní street) and – at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s – the undeveloped area between Besední and Veselá street. The quiet struggle, which has taken place for this especially lucrative and exceptionally advantageous place for a philharmonic orchestra, has recently come to a promising outcome. more
Looking at the daily schedule of Zdeněk Pololáník, one cannot tell that he will be eighty in October. Just last Sunday, he performed at a mass in the morning, inspected the performance of his opera Noc plná světla: transparent none repeat scroll in Olomouc in the afternoon and played at a concert in Besední dům in Brno in the evening. His music is well known to concert visitors and movie fans; some of his songs are sung at churches. This year’s Brno Organ Festival is devoted to his jubilee. We met in the village of Ostrovačice where he works and plays the organ at the local church. more
Talking to music veterans about music is entertaining and painful at the same time. You learn things you had no idea about but, at the same time, you don’t know where to start and how to wrap up. The topics covered are growing and you feel like it would be a shame to shape the interview. An interview with the legend of Czech jazz Jan Dalecký confirmed this one hundred percent. If the name confuses you, he was formerly known as Jan Beránek. I did ask about the change, by the way. more
This week Janáček Theatre in Brno will see the farewell performance by the prima ballerina of the Brno National Theatre Jana Přibylová. It is going to be her night, with the support of her fans and colleagues. However, she says she should bow for them. We discussed the end of her career, new beginnings and a dancer’s free time. We talked about how unfair it is that dancers’ careers are so short or the fact that she has never really left Brno. As we were leaving the café in the theatre building, there was a big photo of her teacher and mentor Kateřina Gratzerová. more
At the end of this week a new organ will be consecrated in the Church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary (the so-called Jesuit church). It is an organ dedicated to Brno. The audience will be able to listen to it for the first time on 29 June. A few days later, it will be incorporated into another important event – a concert by Alena Veselá on the occasion of her 91st birthday. We met in Slavia café, on neutral ground between the Faculty of Music of the Janáček Academy of Music and Performing arts and the Besední dům concert hall. We discussed the organ, the concert hall in Brno and cultural grants. more
The biggest problems are those we find closest to us. This applies to cities just as it does to people. The area between the streets Cejl and Francouzská is widely considered to be the most dangerous and the most problematic part of Brno. It is, in fact, a small area which one can cover on foot within just twenty minutes. Or thirty, if one walks really slowly. In our eyes, it has gradually become a major problem we refer to as the Brno Bronx. Many Roma live there and if you go there at night you may never walk again. Why do people think so? What are the local people like and why does this part of Brno host the Ghettofest festival? I sought answers from the co-organiser of the festival Alica Heráková. more
Ten years ago a Pan-European project entitled České sny (Czech Dreams) was born. It was based on the ideas of the International Music Festival of thirteen cities, bringing superb musical performances outside established cultural centres. The creators’ idea was to introduce concerts with unified dramaturgy in selected Czech towns and villages and their respective European twin towns. This year’s domestic part of Czech Dreams will be launched on 22 May, moving abroad on 4 July, when the symbolic flag of the festival will be handed over from Břeclav to Trnava. The manager of the festival Zdenka Kachlová discusses the development of Czech Dreams and its future. more
The first impulse for the interview with the basso Richard Novák was this year’s Easter Festival of Sacred Music. We started and finished the interview with it. Try talking about this year with a man who has been a singer for sixty years. Richard Novák will be 83 this year but he still has it. And if based on the following words he may sound a bit conceited, be aware he is telling it like it is. more
We met in an apartment where Jaromír Nečas has lived since 1946. The music writer and director, folklorist and teacher who discovered world music by accident recently celebrated his 92nd birthday. At the age of six, he was hospitalised in Uherské Hradiště with bone marrow irritation and the prognosis was so bleak he even received his last rites. His fellow patients, a poacher from Znorovy and a winemaker from Petrov would pass glasses of wine back and forth across the bed with the sick boy. Occasionally they would offer him some wine. He claims that was what eventually saved him. By the way, a bottle of traminer was present at our interview. Actually, it was not really an interview but rather story telling or a series of associations which I bumped forward every now and then. We were surrounded by a piano, a few folk instruments and mountains of sheet music and books. more
Guitarist Peter Bernstein will arrive at this year's JazzFestBrno Festival in a trio with Larry Goldings and Bill Stewart. The New York Times referred to them in the 1990s as the best organ trio, and the player level as well as the inventiveness of the ensemble is still as high. Together, they released eight albums and one DVD. Peter Bernstein is among the musicians who were in the "front line" of contemporary jazz in the 1990s. Joshua Redman, Diana Krall, Jimmy Cobb, Joe Lovano and, of course, members of the trio that we will hear in Brno in April were among his colleagues. Our conversation also mainly focused on his "home" band, even though I did not forget to ask about Brad Mehldau, with whom Peter Bernstein often played. more
Barbara Maria Willi is an excellent cembalist, organist and educator. She is one of the dramaturges of the Concentus Moraviae festival and she is also working on her own series of old music. There are many things we could talk about, which is why we agreed at the beginning that we shall talk about two of them. First, the 11th Barbara Maria Willi uvádí (Barbara Maria Willi Presents…) scheduled for next week. And second, the expansion of the Department of Organ and Historic Interpretation at the Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts (JAMU). more
A very interesting building is growing before our eyes on Veveří (street). Once completed, it will be known as Sono Center, a club with superb acoustic properties. The concert hall will be located in a sphere placed between two semicircular concrete blocks. The two blocks will house facilities for musicians, as well as a hotel and a restaurant. We sat down with the dramaturge of Sono Centre Dan Giač and the investor of this project Jiří Štopl to discuss the upcoming programme, the ideal line-up or the very reason why Štopl decided to build the center, as he is also the co-owner of the Sono Records studio. The two gentlemen did not have time to do this interview together but they were okay with my postproduction mixing. more
Singer Vojtěch Dyk and the Brno B-Side Band, led by Josef Buchta, have had just completed a short dream tour. Last week, they had five joint concerts with American Kurt Elling, Grammy winner, rightly regarded as one of the best jazz singers of today. The following interviews took place in the Janáček Theatre on Wednesday, 4th of December. The orchestra had played a sold-out concert at the Mahen Theatre on Tuesday and it had just finished an afternoon rehearsal in the Janáček Theatre. About two hours were left until the next sold-out concert… more
The Brno-based Vox Iuvenalis choir will celebrate its 20th anniversary this year. Formerly a high school choir, it has become one of the best amateur choirs, winning several international competitions. Most importantly, its current members thorougly enjoy singing just like their predecessors did twenty years ago. Today it is managed under the auspices of the Brno University of Technology. Jan Ocetek has been with the choir since it was founded. We sat down with him to talk about the choir and its unusual projects. more
On Saturday, 24 August, the Korean radio orchestra KBS Symphony Orchestra with its musical director - Finnish conductor and violinist Pietari Inkinen - came to Brno's Špilberk Festival with an exclusively romantic repertoire. The invitation was also accepted by South Korean violinist Bomsori Kim, a graduate of the prestigious Julliard School. more
For a quarter of a century now, the Brno Philharmonic has been organising the Špilberk Festival at the end of August in the courtyard of the castle of the same name. Four open-air musical evenings offer the audience a selection of concerts featuring classical, film and computer music, as well as often jazz and other genres. This makes it a diverse mix of performers and repertoires with an often pleasant, summery, laid-back ambience. This year's big and rapdily sold-out attraction was the Wednesday evening of 21 August, full of melodies from the James Bond films, performed by the Czech National Symphony Orchestra, headed by world-renowned conductor, composer and arranger Steven Mercurio. During the concert, the audience also got to enjoy singers Sara Milfajtová, Vendula Příhodová and David Kraus. 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
In the spirit of the idea that Brno and folklore belong together, the Folklore Ensemble Happening of the Year took place on Thursday 6 June. The event was organised by the Brno UNESCO City of Music Office in cooperation with the Brno Dances and Sings association. The event thus became part of a long-term project that set out to map the amateur music scene in Brno, and not only folk music. Last year Brno City of Music reached out to choirs in a similar way, and in the future will host garage bands and more. This just goes to prove the diversity of Brno's music scene, not only as regards professional ensembles, but also enthusiastic amateurs for whom music is an inseparable part of their lives. more
The Brno Dances and Sings Association and TIC Brno organised the 49th annual Brno Dances and Sings show on 6 June. The programme, concentrated into a single day, was busier than in previous years. The subtitle Year of Folklore Ensembles was borrowed from the project of the same name organised by the Brno UNESCO City of Music Office. more
A year ago we would have found an Asian market in the New Synagogue in Velké Meziříčí. However, the town decided to buy the building and has started to make more fitting and dignified use of it. On Wednesday 5 June, during the ongoing Concentus Moraviae festival, audiences could visit this heritage site and enjoy a chamber concert by singer and violinist Iva Bittová and her women's choir Babačka, featuring musicians Jakub Jedlinský (accordion) and Pavel Fischer (violin). more
The evening concert by Ensemble Opera Diversa entitled The Face of Water, which took place on 4 June outdoors in the atrium of the Moravian Library in Brno, was preceded by a morning discussion between Professor Miloš Štědron and Associate Professor Vladimír Maňas from the Institute of Musicology at Masaryk University. They both enjoyed an engaging talk on the theme of water in art (from Gregorian chant to the early 20th century), concluding with a sample of the edition and the playing of a recording of Janáček's symphony The Danube. The concert, conducted by Gabriela Tardonová and inspired by the theme of water, featured one world and three Czech premières. Harpist Dominika Kvardová appeared as a soloist. more
Like other music festivals, the 29th annual Concentus Moraviae International Music Festival has not only had to reflect the fact that it is the Year of Czech Music, but also the unique 200th anniversary of the birth of Bedřich Smetana, the founder of modern Czech music. The dramaturgy of this year’s festival, which has just launched, is in the spirit of "Metamorphoses: Czech Smetana!". The first festival concert, which took place on 31 May at the Kyjov Municipal Cultural Centre, gave a hint of the direction the rest of the festival's dramaturgy will take. The organisers of the show decided to explore Smetana's work from a fresh angle and to work not only with the music, but also with the audience’s expectations. The opening evening saw a performance of Smetana's famous String Quartet No. 1 in E minor From My Life, but in an arrangement for a symphony orchestra penned by conductor and pianist George Szell. Smetana's work was complemented by the world première of the Concerto for Flute and Orchestra "Sadunkertoja" by Finnish composer, conductor and artist in residence at the 29th annual festival, Olli Mustonen, commissioned especially for the festival. Mustonen also conducted the Prague Philharmonia's performance of the two works. Danish flautist Janne Thomsen performed as soloist. more
Musical Inventory Ensemble Opera Diversa
As part of Ensemble Opera Diversa's Musical Inventory series of concerts, which began back in 2017, the ensemble aims to present (re)discovered works and composers that we rarely hear on stage. However, this dramaturgical line also offers the space and initiative to create some completely new works performed in world premières. This time, the chamber concert held on Wednesday, 29 May 2024 in the auditorium of the Rector's Office of the Brno University of Technology (BUT) was directed by the Diversa Quartet: Barbara Tolarová (1st violin), Jan Bělohlávek (2nd violin), David Křivský (viola), Iva Wiesnerová (cello), OK Percussion Duo (Martin Opršál, Martin Kneibl), soloists Aneta Podracká Bendová (soprano) and pianist Tereza Plešáková. The theme was a nod to the Prague composition school from a pedagogical and artistic perspective. 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
Connection, unity, contemplation - these words can be used to describe the musical evening of Schola Gregoriana Pragensis under the direction of David Eben and organist Tomáš Thon, which took place yesterday as part of the Easter Festival of Sacred Music at the church of St. Thomas. Not only the singing of a Gregorian chant, but also the works of composer Petr Eben (1929-2007) enlivened the church space with sound and colour for an hour. 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
For the fourth subscription concert of the Philharmonic at Home series, which took place on 14 March at the Besední dům and was entitled Mozartiana, the Brno Philharmonic, this time under the direction of Czech-Japanese conductor Chuhei Iwasaki, chose four works from the 18th to 20th centuries. These works are dramaturgically linked either directly through their creation in the Classical period or by inspiration from musical practices typical of that period. The first half of the concert featured Martina Venc Matušínská with a solo flute. more
The second stop on the short Neues Klavier Trio Dresden's Czech-German tour was at the concert hall of the Janáček Academy of Music on 6 March at 16:00. A programme consisting of world premières by two Czech and two German composers was performed in four cities (Prague, Brno, Leipzig and Dresden). more
The last opera première of the National Theatre Brno this year was Hurvínek Sells the Bride, which was co-produced with the Spejbl and Hurvínek Theatre. The première continued the thematic focus associated with the Year of Czech Music and took place on 24 November in the large hall of the Reduta Theatre. more
Editorial
The Brno Culture Newsletter presents an overview of what is happening in the city’s theatres, clubs, summer festivals and other cultural events in Brno. more
The Brno Culture Newsletter presents an overview of what is happening in the city’s theatres, clubs, summer festivals and other cultural events in Brno. more
The 20th annual festival will, as always, take place in Brno. Spectators will be treated to a spectacular clown show in the "sea" on Moravské náměstí to open the festival, and a subsequent weekend programme in Björnson's Orchard. The programme includes performances, art forms, new circus, puppets and classic drama and concerts. more
NdB is looking for dancers for the upcoming opera Manon Lescaut
The Janáček Opera ensemble of the National Theatre Brno (NdB) is announcing an audition for dance roles in the upcoming opera Manon Lescaut by Giacomo Puccini, directed by Štěpán Pácl. The production is to be choreographed by Andrea Miltnerová and the première is announced for 7 February 2025 at the Janáček Theatre. more
Just in: The city has signed a contract with the contractors of its new hall. Construction work can begin
Today, to the strains of the first movement of Janáček's Confidential Letters, the contract with the contractor of the Janáček Cultural Centre was officially signed at the New Town Hall. more
The end of the season at the Janáček Opera will see the première of Here I Am, Orlando
The opera season will culminate at the Janáček Theatre with the world première of Here I Am, Orlando based on the novel by Virginia Woolf. For this adaptation, the artistic director of the Janáček Opera and director Jiří Heřman reached out to the prominent Slovak composer Ľubica Čekovská. The future chief conductor of the Janáček Opera of the National Theatre Brno (NdB), Robert Kružík, will take on the musical direction, while the choral part will be staged by Martin Buchta. more
Alisa Weilerstein and David Mareček - their joint concert is broadcast today on Czech Television
At 9:55 this evening, a recording of the joint concert by American cellist Alisa Weilerstein accompanied by David Mareček on the piano will be available on Czech Television's iVysílání. Their recital was recorded in 2021 and took place in the empty Rudolfinum, as the concert was cancelled for the public due to the COVID-19 pandemic. There will be a performance of Leoš Janáček's Fairy Tale for Cello and Piano, as well as works by Claude Debussy, Antonín Dvořák and César Franck. more
The management of the Brno Philharmonic announces selection procedure to fill the vacant post of Head of the Concert Activities Department, Orchestra Manager for Abroad. The closing date for applications is 18 June 2024 (inclusive). more
International Guitar Festival and Courses Brno: Carmen Cortéz, Gerardo Nuñez and others
International Guitar Festival and Courses Brno enters its 33rd year. Featuring the best guitarists from Europe, Japan and South America. The festival will open with a night of flamenco from Andalusia with dancer Carmen Cortéz and guitarists Gerardo Nuñez and José León, accompanied by singer Antonio Carbonell. more
The fifth annual Gregoryfest will be held in the newly renovated amphitheatre in Brno - Řečkovice. This year, it will last three whole days and the line-up ranges from stand-up comedy through funk to rap metal. more