It is like the state budget: It can be considered the budget of any new government only two years after its election. This applies in all aspects, starting from the perspective of an idea and ending with the purely practical, i.e. technical, promotional and organisational perspective. Two years ago, the Janáček Brno Festival was the proverbial tipping point. The new director of the organiser Brno National Theatre had only been in office for a year and the opera director Jiří Heřman for six months. A lot of change was going on at Brno City Hall (which remains the only major benefactor of large music and theatre institutions; it seems like this does not concern the regions and the state) and the existing dramaturgical nature of the event was dismantled after the festival. After two years, the concert series can be seen as a series of alternating successes, however, with some worrying symptoms of amateurism.
Only one day after the famous premiere of Katya Kabanova (8 October), the Prague Philharmonic Choir (PFS) with its choirmaster Lukáš Vasilek performed an afternoon concert. In addition to the commendable inclusion of Janáček's female and male choirs, two more challenging "Vysočina" cantata by Bohuslav Martinů were played. The concert was extraordinary and it needs to be said right at the beginning that there was a major gap between the interpretive performance of the Prague performers and all other ensembles which sang at the festival. It seems that members of the PFS are graduates of secondary schools of music and musical universities, and therefore in terms of their singing abilities it is a truly superb choir and it is a real pleasure to listen to them. However, question marks are hanging over the overall interpretive concept of Lukáš Vasilek. He chooses a very fast pace and he leads the singers to a straight tone without the efforts of small agogics. The singing of tones is missing, and the phrases lack any stops. It is a modern approach to interpretation which perfectly suits, for example, Stravinský. In contrast, today, the conservative concept full of crowns, ritardando and general pauses probably brings a forgiving smile to many faces. Therefore, the performers from Prague keep up with the times and are good at it. However, one cannot go without sadly thinking: It is just a shame to abandon the emotional effects intrinsically tied to choral singing. In some aspects, the dramatic Janáček passed by somewhat casually and Martinů, smartly oscillating on the edge of simplicity and banality, worked together with Mahler's choral burliness somewhat grotesquely. It is also necessary to mention the prominent part of soprano Pavla Vykopalová, who sang her roles carefully from the notation, but perfectly and with adequate expressivity, all that one day after and also one day before her phenomenal performances in the title role of Janáček's Katya Kabanova.
The only purely orchestral concert of the festival took place a day later. Although there was no hint of chamber music, the guest performance of the Prague Chamber Philharmonic (newly under the "world" title PKF – Prague Philharmonia) was placed in Besední dům (Meeting House). I overheard a lot of sighing over the excessively clanking sound of this space in the audience. However, in this aspect, the musical Brno should really get thinking, or even grab its nose. Although it is popular to complain about the suffocating acoustics of Janáček Theatre and long for a new concert hall, the dull sound of the orchestra etched under our skin like a rash. We cannot deal with the full dynamic range of the orchestra as we know it from the Rudolfinum or from most old and smaller concert halls. Compared to the Janáček Orchestra, Besední dům is the opposite extreme, there are practically no damping surfaces here, but that was also the case at the time after the opening of the hall in 1873 when the entire repertoire was performed here. PKF chose the perfect dynamic range, did not exaggerate fortissimo, did not wander off to a dull performance. Tomáš Brauner led the orchestra with a wonderfully elegant and precise gesture, and although Janáček's Fiddler's Child is apparently a novelty for the orchestra, the musicians from PKF did not stay far behind with their typically rigorous performance and confusing finesse of the composer.
However, an unpleasant surprise was the performance of Bartók's second piano concerto. Just the choice itself of soloist Ivo Kahánek was puzzling. The demanding piano part, extreme in its technical and actually also physical demands, requires a virtuoso with a specific focus rather than a versatile pianist with a tendency toward commercial behaviour. Kahánek did not manage to rehearse his part and instead it looked like he began to focus on it a few days before the concert. He performed the shattering effect of the rhythmically exposed part in a neutral mezzoforte, very approximately, with many errors and with his eyes hopelessly locked in the notation. The harmony with the page turner was not good. And although the orchestra stood its ground with honour, the whole thing sounded like a bad joke. Ivo Kahánek thus fell among the dubious marketing celebrities of the Czech music scene, for whom Brno is not enough motivation for at least an average or adequate performance. We have experienced similar flops with violinist Šporcl (Shostakovich), pianist Kasík (also Shostakovich) and cellist Bárta (Haydn, Dvořák and really anything that has been played there in recent years).
The break brought the desired oblivion and after the break, PKF showed its uniqueness, namely a combination of youthful energy and a mature, masterful technique. Bartók’s geometrically written Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta had its typical characteristics, ranging from a strict form to extravagant details, emphasised with beautiful interpretation. Resolute determination, but not theatrics was prevalent. Thank God, the evening as a whole was impressive.
The unpopular Monday performance fell on the home Czech Philharmonic Choir Brno under the leadership of Petr Fiala and, unfortunately, the audience showed up in very low numbers. The long programme (100 minutes of demanding vocals) presented a version of the folk lyrics of Vítězslav Novák and Bohuslav Martinů, the spiritual works of the latter and Petr Řezníček, Petr Fiala and Leoš Janáček, and in the end two large Bezruč male choirs of Leoš Janáček. The concert culminated at the end of both halves, first with Řezníček's extensive musicalisation of the apocalyptic sequence Dies irae, a serious or even pathetic work, quite challenging in terms of vocals and very varied in terms of the compositional techniques used. The moody naive musical pun Regina coeli by Petr Fiala after the break was awkward considering to what extent it is appropriate for an influential choirmaster to conduct his compositional experiments at prestigious festival concerts. Whoever had their doubts about the sanity of Mr. Fiala, was affirmed in their notion by the effect of the switched-off lights, which also failed because they were flickering. The true culmination was, however, the performance of Janáček's Marycka Magdonova and Seventy Thousand. Fresh vocals came on stage and that was one of the highlights of the festival. These flashy songs unfortunately remain practically unplayed, partly due to their complexity and the disappearing tradition of male choirs. The Brno choir members were thoroughly prepared for this unique moment. Although Fiala's concert was not distinctive or very original, he emerged as an excellent representative of the traditional Janáček's interpretation, which is not very frequent.
In the Brno context, it will certainly be interesting to compare the performance of the two large professional rivals, the Prague Philharmonic Choir (PFS from Bohemia) and the Czech Philharmonic Chorus (ČFSB from Moravia). Yes, it is confusing. On most old gramophone recordings with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra (CPO), PFS used to use the translation Czech Philharmonic Chorus to emphasise the institutional affinity with the orchestra. However, there was no name of this choir in Czech and the situation of the 1990s was smartly taken advantage of by the newly emerging professional Brno choral ensemble, Fiala's Czech Philharmonic Chorus of Brno. The rivalry of the two ensembles then culminated after a disagreement between the former director of the CPO Riedlbauch with the long independent PFS, as it had worked only with ČFSB at all Prague concerts of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra for several seasons. The ensembles are incomparable in terms of performance. The Brno ensemble is a leading ensemble on the Central European level, while the Prague ensemble is the absolute world top. However, it is not important and it diverts attention from other factors. When looking at the concert calendars on the websites of both choirs, it is sad to see how often they both have to participate in many different requiems and Ninths and there is not much time left for the actual artistic development and dramaturgy. The idea, which led to the professionalization and institutional independence of PFS and ČFSB, was based on the prospect of higher earnings abroad. Today, however, it appears as a trap from which is difficult to escape. PFS is in a slightly better situation under the auspices of the Ministry, but the members of the not-for-profit organisation ČFSB would deserve more systematic work on projects valuable for the domestic audience in Brno instead of spending dozens of hours a month on buses crisscrossing Europe under comparable material conditions.
The guest performance of the Arnold Schönberg Chor from Vienna on Thursday, 13 October, in Reduta was pleasant, even though it was tuned to a somewhat lighter note. The Viennese arrived in a small group of thirty-three singers with a disparate programme of compositions by Suk, Schönberg, Dvořák and Janáček. Despite the interpretative performance, the best singers apparently stayed in Vienna. However, Schönberg's psalm De profundis performed by the "B Team" made a fantastic impression in the second half of the night and showed how good the concert could be, had...had six of Dvořák's Moravian Duets not been sung in Janáček's four-part adaptation. Czech is clearly all Dutch to the young singers, they had virtually unnoticeable diction limited to vowels. The straightforward simplicity of Dvořák's tunes with the not very convincing piano accompaniment of Stefan Gottfried was almost in a Brahmsian style, which is not necessarily a criticism. In terms of dramaturgy, it was a fall down to the rural level where something playful always had to follow "the serious". Before the bonus – a repetition of several of Dvořák's duets – choirmaster Erwin Ortner spoke to the Brno audience with the utmost warmth and in a friendly tone. Ortner actually assumed that proud Czechs wanted to hear mainly sung Czech performed by the Austrians and they kindly obliged. And that brings us to the essence of the festival concert series: There were moments of strong and weak interpretation, but mainly everyone performed what they saw fit. The various ideas and motivations of guest ensembles were not corrected. Unlike in the past, the concerts during the Janáček Festival did not have a fixed (or actually any) dramaturgy and it is a clear step back in this regard.
The level of the printed programmes at concerts, which a gullible listener bought for CZK 20, was a separate issue. The lists of compositions, artists and the record miniature accompanying texts are confused, incoherent and often misleading, and opus numbers, names of movements and the titles of individual songs in cycles are missing. It is particularly agonising to a reviewer that it is not possible to navigate among the soloists and pianists, often ordinary members of guest ensembles. Even the sole absence of the lyrics sung would be condemnable, but nobody could even think of that with the actual state of things. The exception was the hosting of the Viennese choir, where printed Czech lyrics of the compositions were added to the programmes. Thanks to the organiser who was the first one to care and could not watch it anymore.
This striking rate of disrespect to the audience is either an ostentatious statement that the local opera house attributes scant importance to the concerts at its own festival or the person in charge of organising them has never been to a concert. A festival of global importance? Based on the level of programmes, a group of friends of music in a moderately large township in Vysočina. Festival-goers from around the world? As soon as they picked up the programme, they must have been wondering where they ended up. The musical city of Brno, which happens to be full of students of different music and art fields, who need to complete mandatory practical hours, had never experienced such an embarrassment.
The author was a member of the independent artistic board of the Janáček Brno Festival until May 2016. He left the board at his own request and does not feel to be obliged towards the festival or the Brno National Theatre in any way. Except for expressing his idea to implement a series of choral concerts, he did not influence this year's programme in any form.
