The theme of this year’s Moravian Autumn festival is Revolution – evolution… ®evolution…. And as in previous years there will in addition be another philharmonic festival, the Exposition of New Music. This has the theme NEW ®EVOLUTION. During Moravian Autumn there will be performances from Accademia Bizantina, the Ensemble Berlin Prague, and the pianists Pierre-Laurent Aimard, David Greilsammer and Steffen Schleiermacher. The loudest composition in the history of the world will be heard – the Symphony of Sirens by Arseny Avraamov, as well as the world premiere of the new composition by Marek Kopelent with his personal participation and concerts for children.
Moravian Autumn is entering its 49th year and this time offers 17 concerts and two accompanying events. “Aside from non-traditional or specially created projects listeners can look forward to international stars. For example the Accademia Bizantina, which will be performing here its new programme of Italian Baroque music, as well as the Ensemble Berlin Prague, which with the participation of the composer will give the world premiere of a work by Marek Kopelent written specially for our festival, or the three star pianists Pierre-Laurent Aimard, David Greilsammer and Steffen Schleiermacher,” notes the Brno Philharmonic’s director, Marie Kučerová.
Although the festival only starts officially on October 6, Besední dům will come to life a day earlier with a twenty-eight hour piano marathon. Some 15 pianists will be taking turns at the piano, playing the radical minimalist composition Vexations by Erik Satie, dating from 1893. It is a one-page composition which in accordance with the composer’s instructions is repeated slowly 840 times in a row. Another remarkable experience from the festival’s Piano block will take place on October 8, when the world-renowned David Greilsammer sits at two pianos. On one piano he will play Scarlatti sonatas, while on the second – prepared – piano sonatas by John Cage, and he will do that alternately and without pause. “Greilsammer linked these two composers on the basis of certain similarities in their approach to sonata form thus developing a suggestive dialogue that blurs the passage of the couple of centuries separating the two composers. In fact all of the pianists giving recitals with us conceived of their programmes as musical dialogues,” revealed the festival’s programme director Vítězslav Mikeš.
One of the most eagerly anticipated events of the festival is the Symphony of Sirens, the loudest composition in the history of the world. It was written by Arseny Avraamov and as a sound spectacle it was performed in 1922 in Azerbaijan’s Baku. He involved the navy, aircraft, seaplanes, engines, the sirens of several factories, fully armed infantry troops, a brass band and choirs. This concept will be made to resound in the city, processed especially for the Brno Exhibition Centre by the renowned artistic duo Andreas Ammer and FM Einheit (ex-member of the legendary Einstürzende Neubauten). The performance in Brno will include fire engines, ambulances, police cars, artillerymen from Slavkov, fans of Kometa hockey club and a steam locomotive. These will be augmented by eight choirs, brass band music and newly constructed instruments, such as for example a sound funnel with steel springs. The festival ends on 28 October with the planting of a linden tree in memory of Masaryk with the participation of nine choirs.
The Moravian Autumn international music festival will be taking place from 5 to 28 October 2017.
The jubilee thirtieth year of the Exposition of New Music, with the subtitle NEW ®EVOLUTION offers novel and free works, which, even if not the most recent in terms of the date of their creation, have definitely lost nothing of their revolutionary qualities, even though many of them have become part of the evolution of music. The score may be old but the music is that of the here and now. Works old and new meet on the same stage and in the same listeners evoke the same senses of puzzlement, bliss and satisfaction.
The exposition is returning to the beginnings of the festival, when the first year was part of the Brno International Music Festival, now renamed as Moravian Autumn. Symbiotically, and at the same time somewhat rebelliously, it interacts with standard festival events and opens the door for often unjustly neglected forms, genres and means of musical expression. It ranges from absolute freedom of interpretation to machine performance, from installations through improvisation and musical interventions to distinctive, original compositions.
“We will have a free interpretation of the longest graphic score in the world (Treatise by Cornelia Cardew) by the legendary AMM, listening to above-ground and underground electromagnetic fields in a public space with Christina Kubisch, the long-delayed project Pounding Ponc – LIVE and for example the Moscow Contemporary Music Ensemble with their multimedia musical project Machinery,” says Viktor Pantůček in praise of the programme.
The 30th Exposition of New Music will take place from 11 to 25 October 2017.
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