Bohuslav Martinů and composers related with him and with France. Composers celebrating the jubilee as well as the Moravian Autumn festival. These are the main themes of this year's edition. The festival runs from late September to mid-October. It will open with Einstein on the Beach, a minimalist opera by Philip Glass, in which Suzanne Vega takes on the role of the narrator. The festival will culminate with two life anniversaries, celebrated by the chief conductor of the Brno Philharmonic, Dennis Russell Davies, and Hungarian conductor, composer and teacher Peter Eötvös.
“Fifty years encourage looking back. But we do not want to be merely retrospective, but to seek new impulses in the roots of the festival,” said dramaturge Vítězslav Mikeš. Over three weeks, the festival programme will feature a mix of nineteen different events presenting music from the 17th century to the present. “We will start off spectacularly with Glass's minimalist opera Einstein on the Beach, in which Suzanne Vega takes on the role of the narrator,” said Marie Kučerová, director of the Brno Philharmonic. It is an approximately four-hour work in which the doors of the hall remain open so that listeners can enter and exit as they wish. "It is also the intention of the authors who want to emphasize that this is not a conventional dramatic structure aiming towards the final point, but rather a ritual or specific environment in which the viewer chooses what he or she will perceive," said musicologist Matěj Kratochvíl. The Moravian Autumn will take place from 29 September to 16 October 2019.
During the four days of the festival, music by Bohuslav Martinů will be played. In addition to his songs in the Besední dům, the famous Brno villas and in a church, also his incidental music for Gide's play Oedipus. "It has been performed only once thus far, as part of a live radio show in 1936. We will present it for the first time on a theatre stage, so it is in fact a world premiere," said the director of the performance Mark Ther from the Terén platform, with which the production is being created. He emphasized that the stage form expands on the original radio format and shows in a combination of the musical and dramatic components its power in a deflected theatrical form with a symbolic dimension.
World stars will come to Brno for the festival – for example pianists Piotr Anderszewski with the Basel Chamber Orchestra and Alexandre Tharaud, who will present music from rooms of the Versailles Castle. David Greilsammer will return after two years, this time as conductor of the Geneva Camerata ensemble. The dance-music project Dance of the Sun, which has won ovations all over the world, is considered by critics to be one of the top achievements in the world of contemporary dance art. The chosen concept places great demands on the instrumentalists and the conductor not only in terms of coordination of play and dance movement, but also in the need to play by heart.
Mieczyslaw Weinberg is one of the jubilee authors to be commemorated by the festival; in December, 100 years will have passed since his birth. The originality and depth of his opera, symphonic and chamber works have only begun to be appreciated in recent years. “We decided to present all of his sonatas for violin and piano performed by Milan Pala and Ladislav Fančovič. This is an extraordinary feat and a recording will be made of it,” emphasized Mikeš.
Another two jubilees will make the festival culminate. At the closing concert, two prominent personalities of contemporary music will celebrate their 75th birthday: the chief conductor of the Brno Philharmonic, Dennis Russell Davies, and the Hungarian conductor, composer and teacher Peter Eötvös. The Besední dům will thus become a venue for a unique and unrepeatable meeting. Eötvös will conduct compositions that influenced him, while Davies will conduct pieces written by Eötvös. For example, his work Seven dedicated to the memory of the seven victims of the Columbia space shuttle crash. Forty-nine musicians are divided into seven groups. Apart from solo violin that is placed on the stage, six more groups are located all around the concert hall.
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