Reviews
A trio of concerts with the same programme as performed by Czech Virtuosi in early September in monasteries in Vranov, at the Grohova Street in Brno and in Doubravník can be considered as much a final goodbye to a beautiful holiday (a visit to the church delicately set into a beautiful landscape is in itself one of the noblest tourist experiences) as a step into the new concert season. Let's remind ourselves that the Brno ensemble with the difficult English-Italian name has been filling the space between large orchestras and chamber ensembles since its founding in 1998 in more than just the Brno concert life - so far they have performed a third of their concerts abroad. And they do so at a high level: its members are top players from the Philharmonic Orchestra and the Opera Orchestra, led by the concert master Pavel Wallinger from his stand. more
Saturday night completed the 17th Špilberk International Music Festival with an original attempt at a dialogue between the jazz band Robert Balzar Trio with the exceptionally talented singer Dan Bárta and symphonists of the Brno Philharmonic Orchestra. The final, fifth concert of the festival in the crowded courtyard of the Brno castle provided a dignified end to the August series of musical evenings with live and recorded music, offering a varied mix of different musical genres. more
The 17th annual Špilberk International Music Festival opened on Tuesday with a concert of the Brno Philharmonic Orchestra and the Czech Philharmonic Choir. The somewhat asymmetric program was filled with two well-known cantatas: Te Deum Laudamus by Antonín Dvořák and Carmina Burana by Carl Orff. more
One of the reasons for founding Dragoun's band Futurum in 1983 was allegedly a desire to do "short songs" at a time when Progres focused on broad zones. The fact that the nearly 10-minute song Zdroj then became one of the biggest hits of Futurum is a different story. The founder of Futurum, Roman Dragoun, has remained faithful to shorter songs even in his solo career – from the comeback album Stín mý krvez from 1995 to the present. more
The current album of Tomáš Kočko brings an image of the pre-Christian Moravia, violence and fear of impending changes. The individual songs combine death and the Slavic god of the underworld Veles into a thematic whole. more
On the eve of St. Nicholas Day, the Janacek Opera brought the second of the four major premieres of this season to the Janacek Theatre - Smetana's "simple traditional" opera The Kiss (Hubička). After Jenůfa from the beginning of October, this opera closes the premiere offer of the traditional Czech opera for this season; what is more important, however, is that it opens a four-part show of new works by the greatest talents of the rising generation of Czech opera direction. more
Wise guys, who are versed in every situation, and who know how to fish in turbid waters and come out every time with a profit, are not the only aspect of the Great French Revolution. The Ensemble Opera Diversa held the premiere of a new opera by Miloš Štědroň yesterday which, despite the initial lack of clarity, eventually turned out to be an ironic celebration of political cunning, espionage and managerial skills in dealing with human material. more
Memory? Honour? Its revival? The best answer to the question of what Dunajská vlna actually is, is the first four bars of their debut album, Jednou. First they were joined by older colleagues Vladimír Václavek and Josef Ostřanský; now the space is reigned over by a young drummer Michaela Antalová. New blood, new energy and a promise that Dunajská vlna is not, and will not be, a mere copy of the legendary Dunaj. more
Srdiečka tiché is the most compact album of the Tady To Máš band – not only in terms of dramaturgy, but also when it comes to mood and vocal expression. The album pays tribute not only to the poet Erik Ondrejiček, but also the beauty and poetry of the Slovak language. more
The audience treated the vocal recital of Adam Plachetka as a major event. They were led to it immediately by the care provided by the organisers who kindly attended to the concert-goers right in the doorway of the Besední dům concert hall. Adam Plachetka has a reputation as an outstanding singer and he lived up to it in many respects, even though it took him the entire first half of the concert to relax. more
The sixth annual Vocalfest Brno opened yesterday with a performance by the organizer - the Vox Q male chorus. Choruses by Leoš Janáček and Pavel Křížkovský performed by the vocal quartet got an unusual charge brought by the individualities of the individual singers and their mutual harmony. During the entire evening, the audience barely remembered that they might be missing the powerful sound of a large chorus. more
Fink's last album Hard Believer played a special chord: it excited existing fans and attracted many new ones. It is quite difficult to find a record, the quality of the content of which would hold up from the first to the last song and would maintain a high, not only musical, level from the initial tones to the finish. However, Hard Believer fulfils this without an exception. The complexity and urgency of the music and lyrics permeates the entire record and the desire of the listeners to hear this all live brought Fink to the Czech Republic for the fourth time this year. After Prague, even Brno got its concert. more
The musical about the long-term friendship between French singer Edith Piaf and German actress and singer Marlene Dietrich is focused on the solid base of their famous songs and the slightly decadent atmosphere of the 1950s in Hollywood. The new production of the City Theatre Brno tells a story of their close relationship and what they meant to each other. more
The Brno National Theatre ballet brought a classic of the twentieth century to Janáček Theatre along with contemporary authors. The staging of three diverse choreographies was on such a level that it proved the competitiveness of the Brno ensemble in the world of contemporary dance. 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
As part of its European tour, the Taiwanese Taipei Philharmonic Chamber Choir (TPCC), under the direction of artistic director and choirmaster Dr. YuChung Johnny Ku, took the city up on its invitation and visited Brno. The concert was held on Monday, 13th August in the hall of the newly renovated Passage Hotel. 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
Editorial
The autumn part of the year-long JazzFestBrno festival will open next week at the Sono Centre by Al Di Meola, one of the greatest jazz guitarists of all time. At the end of September, American trumpeter Randy Brecker, winner of seven Grammy Awards and twenty nominations, together with the Gustav Brom Radio Big Band, will celebrate 100 years of Czech Radio's Brno studio in their first ever joint concert at the same venue. The festival will also feature multi-instrumentalist Jiří Slavík and his ten-member ensemble Polka-boys. At the Goose on a String Theatre, as part of the Polkatime project, he will present radical adaptations of the polka that bring back the boldness and humour of this Czech national dance. American vibraphonist Joel Ross will be at the Letovice Elementary Art School Concert Hall. The autumn will also see the continuation of the Club Life series at Cabaret des Péchés. This time with the singer and "jazz artist for the hip hop generation" José James and a double concert featuring two of the Czech Republic’s leading jazz line-ups - the Robert Balzar Trio and the Matej Benko Quintet. The end of the festival will not feature cult American saxophonist Kamasi Washington, who is postponing his entire tour, including the Brno concert, to 18 March 2025 for health reasons. more
Flute and clarinet players present their talents at the Leoš Janáček International Competition
The Faculty of Music of the Janáček Academy of Performing Arts (JAMU) organises the prestigious International Leoš Janáček Competition in Brno every year. This year marks the 30th anniversary of the flute and clarinet competition. The final rounds of the competition in both disciplines will take place at the Besední dům, where the competitors will be accompanied by the Czech Virtuosi orchestra conducted by Vít Spilka and the Ensemble Opera Diversa orchestra conducted by Gabriela Tardonová. more
July 2024 Cultural newsletter from the BCH Department of Culture
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 Philharmonic will open its 69th season marking the anniversaries of two musical greats: Smetana and Bruckner
The Brno Philharmonic will embark on its 69th season this Sunday. With this concert, principal conductor Dennis Russell Davies will begin his seventh year at the helm of the orchestra. The programme commemorates the anniversaries of two giants of the Romantic era: the founder of Czech national music, Bedřich Smetana, and the prominent Austrian symphonist Anton Bruckner, born 200 years ago this year. more
Janáček's opera: Peter Berger nominated for Thalia Award for the role of Dalibor
Peter Berger has been nominated for a Thalia Award for performing the role of Dalibor in the production of Smetana's opera Dalibor, directed by David Pountney and scored by Tomáš Hanus. more
Czech Ensemble Baroque opens the 13th season of the Bacha na Mozarta! subscription series
Czech Ensemble Baroque opens the 13th season of its "Bacha na Mozarta!” subscription series in Brno. The dramatic highlight of the season will be the performance of Antonio Vivaldi's only surviving oratorio, Judith Triumphans, with mezzo-soprano Dagmar Šašková and Swedish singing star Malena Ernman in the lead roles. Eight more subscription concerts will follow. more
Diverse Autumn 2024: premières and the ongoing Year of Czech Music
Ensemble Opera Diversa is looking forward to a diverse autumn packed with premières and exceptional collaborations, greatly enriching the ongoing Year of Czech Music. more
Open-air concert: as always, the National Theatre Brno will open the new season on the piazzetta in front of the Janáček Theatre
The National Theatre Brno will open its 2024/2025 season this Thursday. The concert on the piazzetta in front of the Janáček Theatre will feature the NdB Janáček Opera’s soloists, choir and orchestra led by chief conductor Marko Ivanović. Actors from the NdB drama troupe will also be performing, singing songs from the productions. The evening will be hosted by Jana Štvrtecká and Petr Bláha from the NdB Drama Theatre. more
Twenty Years of the Brno Municipal Theatre’s Music Theatre
To mark this important anniversary, the Brno Municipal Theatre will be presenting a selection of music that has appeared in the Music Theatre's repertoire over the past twenty years. Several times in September, a gala concert will be held to celebrate Twenty Years of the Music Theatre. 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
