Forfest Kromeriz CZECH REPUBLIC 2002
ComposerUSA /Winter 2002/
The international festival of the contemporary music and the plastic arts with the spiritual orientation Forfest, a member of a prestigious association European Conference of Promoters of New Music, takes place every year during hot days in June in Kromeriz in the Czech Republic.
Kromeriz (Kroměříž) is a town with about 30,000 inhabitants in the middle-east of the republic. This area is historically called Moravia, more specified as Hana. An unknown author named this area as „Terra promissa vulgo sacra Hana“.
Kroměříž is famous for its architectural monuments, outstanding archives with many precious manuscripts of musical compositions (J.Gallus, K.Dittersdorf, J.Haydn, W.A.Mozart, P.J.Vejvanovsky, duke Rudolf Jan - a composition corrected by L.v.Beethoven etc.). In this town you can also see paintings from Gothic to Baroque( the most valuable are the originals by Tizian and Van Dyck), baroque cathedrals and beautiful early baroque gardens with a colonnade decorated with 44 sculptures inspired by Greek mythology and history.
Many of these monuments, including the gardens, are the part of the list of the UNESCO world cultural and natural heritage.
The renowned festival of contemporary artistic spiritual music, specialized mainly in forms and genres that are not liturgical, is set in this beautiful and pleasant countryside.
This year the festival was incredibly full of actions. The forth day had six actions, the fifth and sixth day had four actions, during the third and the last day there were three actions. Four times the last action started even two hours before midnight!
In general twelve recitals for soloists or choirs, one full-length chamber opera, one full-length multi-medial project of three authors, three authors’ exhibitions, two night film performances, three full- length author’s concerts and three author’s half- concerts took place. Four lectures were held and one afternoon was devoted to reading literature. On the whole in 102 compositions 40 soloists and 10 ensembles with eight conductors performed.
Forfest shows more and more Czech and world spiritual music. The plurality of opinions of the world, the plurality of aesthetics, compositional technology and media already became natural phenomenon of Forfest in previous years. Listeners, mainly the regular ones, perceive this magnificent plurality, crossroads of multicultural , intercultural and a panoramic view of the world, of the questions of belief and of themselves more and more clearly. This year this plurality was enriched by Hebrew spiritual music.
It is very nice to see that the first-rate Czech and world compositions are more often connected with the greatest art of Czech and foreign interprets and that Czech and Slovak composers are on the level comparable with recognized composers from abroad.
In my opinion a problem lies in an inconsistent keeping of spiritual orientation of festival. It is obvious from the dramaturgy of recitals. Sometimes organizers prefer well-known performers or choirs instead of insisting on festival’s orientation. On the other hand, this approach is also beneficial: some of these performances are great musical experiences.
In my opinion, the outstanding experience in both artistic and spiritual terms was the performance of the Prague ensemble Musica Gaudeans with the soprano Kristyna Valouskova. Their interpretation was nearly perfect and program’s dramaturgy properly chosen. Especially in the song-cycle “Terezin Songs” and the cantata “Song of Hannah” composed by an important composer from Israel Max Stern, who was present at the festival, I witnessed a really extraordinary event. “Terezin Songs”, three songs for soprano and instrumental ensemble, were composed more in an atonal or modal way. They made the listeners enthusiastic with their expressivity, beautiful harmonies, abrupt and sometimes almost miraculous passages and changes. “Song of Hannah”, also for soprano and instrumental ensemble, certainly belongs to the world stages. Dramatic expressivity, modern sound of the ensemble as well as of the soprano and, in spite of modernity, beautiful music with ravishing phrases, this all was “Song of Hannah”. The ensemble as well as the soprano gave an outstanding performance.
The composition for a choir by the American composer Daniel Kessner “On a Mountain”, mainly characterized by richness of the composition’s details and wealth of new ideas, was greatly performed by the mixed choir Gaudium Pragense conducted by the composer Lukas Hurnik. This composition has a deep philosophical value. It is based on a simple structure, which is enriched, transformed and complicated by other musical thoughts, shapes and images.
By the way, after two years D.Kessner appeared at Forfest also as a performer. He and his wife, a pianist Dolly Kessner, gave a wonderful performance at another concert e.g. “Sonata for flute, violin (in cooperation with Zdenka Vaculovicova) and piano” by Bohuslav Martinu but also Kessner’s own compositions, e.g. “Nuances” for bass flute and viola (again Z. Vaculovicova cooperated) or mainly “Stream” for flute, alto flute, bass flute and harpsichord. Here you could hear a wide range of colorful and expressive settings, when the flutes and the harpsichord were changing shaped and slightly rolled melody, metro rhythm and expressions with contrasts not very big, but finely structured. More about changes appeared at the end when the abrupt frullato sforzata were mixed with toccata passages of the solo flute and syrrythmical harpsichord.
The choir Gaudium Pragense performed also other interesting spiritual compositions, e.g. cantata „Svatovojtesska hodinka“ (St. Vojtech’s Hour) by the choir’s conductor Lukas Hurník and “Prastare obrazy” (Very Old Pictures) which were inspired by Old Testament stories of his father Ilja Hurnik.
The other choir, Vox Iuvenalis from Brno with an ebullient talented young conductor Jan Ocetek performed in an excellent way “Missa Brevis” by Zdenek Lukas, a composition with a tuneful neo-classic melodic structure, finely refined, favourite by Czech choirs, and a contemplative, maybe almost in Janacek‘s way composed “Credo” by Jiri Teml.
Also some unspiritual compositions obtained great favor. Above all the multimedia project “Ohne” (The Fires) by the team of authors Ivo Medek- Marketa Dvorakova- Jan Kavan and a chamber opera “Endymio” by Tomas Hanzlik. Both full-length compositions do not belong to spiritual orientation of the festival but they were created as an honor to beauties and history of Kromeriz and their performance was excellent. At another concert for example a composition for a chamber orchestra “Triax” by Ivo Medek or a witty musical work for double bass and piano “Scherzetti cervetti” by Milos Stedron gave a similar impression.
This year it was possible to hear at the festival a series of remarkable compositions: by personally presented the English composer David Matthews (especially impressive “Adagio”!) but also by other authors.
Names of contemporary Czech and other Central-European composers from this year whose names have not been mentioned yet, like Josef Adamik, Frantisek Emmert, Petr Graham, Jan Grossmann, Jan Hanus, Svatopluk Havelka, Krzysztof Knittel from Poland, Ladislav Kupkovic from the Slovak Republic, Vlastimil Matousek, Jiri Matys, Petr Pokorny, Rudolf Ruzicka, Lubos Sluka, Karel Simandl, Zdenka Vaculovicova (a violinist, violist, composer and also an organizer of Forfest), Ilja Zeljenka from the Slovak Republic or Pavel Zemek, are surely worth mentioning.
To listen to their compositions is possible not only during festivals in the Czech Republic (in the Slovak Republic, Poland), they are also broadcast on the Czech radio station Vltava, specializing in artistic programs. You can also listen to them thanks to CDs, to which unfortunately are not distributed in the USA and their distribution in the Czech Republic is not so common.
The advantage of contemporary classical music in Central-Europe is that it is not yet commercialized. There is not a dilemma: to earn and give up the artistic freedom, or not to earn so much money but to be artistically and spiritually free? For a composer from Central- Europe with Christian belief this question is answered beforehand.
Perhaps that is why some foreign artists, including the American ones, like to return to Forfest in Kromeriz. Surely it is not due to trivial payment.
But how long can this situation last? How long can organizers keep Forfest in the world full of aggressive and more and more abject show business by the aesthetic side?
Jan Grossmann