Forfest Czech Republic 2006

Composer USA

Everyone, who is interested in contemporary compositional creation, knows that the International Festival of Contemporary Arts with spiritual orientation FORFEST regulary takes place annually since 1990 in the picturesque historical town of Kromeriz.

However few know that this festival existed since 1980 as an underground movement nonconforming-meetings of musician and visual artists called „Sedanky“ (English equivalent Get-together, Session). Artists would bring their families to make it look like family gatherings (during communist period only family meetings were tolerate...) and they would play new interesting music, hold discussions on new visual subject, listen to poetry and prose of „nonofficial“ writers and philosophize. They discussed questions that are ever relevant:

In what direction is art with spiritual themes heading and what should/must we create?

What is and what is not spiritual oriented art?

Has our all too benevolent approach to questions of faith led us to a dead end?

Has our all too rigid and conservative stance also led us to a dead end?

We can also ask: Are we in an age of a crisis in art, faith and personal values or are we at the beginning of a new epoch, the so called age of the Aquarius, which promisses an unprecedented blossoming of the spirit?

As in previous years we attempted to answer these questions in the XVII annual Forfest which took place from the 17th to the 25th of June, 2006.

As always, musical events outweighed the fine arts projects.

There was a plan to have a multimedia performance in various location of Kromeriz, unfortunately due to lack of finances the American performer Lewis Gesner was unable to carry out his production.

Not even the dramaturgy of the program was as full as in previous years. Traditionally there were three events in a given day including afternoon and evening events sometimes even in the late evening and at midnight. However this did not affect the overall quality of the festival. The organizers were capable of making the most of a modest budget in terms of quality.

But there is a question about future of festival: it is possible to continue under these financial constraints? Will Forfest have to reduce its events to three or four, because other less artistically demanding projects receive money from grants?

Forfest has long since received a reputation as a prestigious contemporary music festival, therefore these is no reason to be concerned that the finances received will no be used effectively and up to their highest potential.

However, it looks as a rather typical feature of not only Czech culture space of today: it staggers between idea of omnipotent economical experts, which claims possibility to implant market conditions to culture and artistic events, and pragmatical thinking of citizens whose feelings tells that it is not possible to resign to nature educational ability of culture and art.

Composers responded to the preceding questions in an artistic non controversial manner such as in the two compositions by Arvo Pärt “Kanon pokajanen“ and “Magnificat“, “Paths“, “Stream“ and other compositions by Daniel Kessner, “Vinice Salomounova“ (Salomonis’ Vineyard) from Jan Vrkoc, “De profundis“ by Vladan Koci, “Ticha hudba“ (Silent Music) by Peter Graham, “Hommage a Edith Stein“ by Giamila Berré or “Missa mussitata II“ by Jan Grossmann.

As though by spiritual revelation compositions resonated such as “Stella matutina“ by Alois Pinos, “Uzdraveni chvilku po posledni chvilce“ (Cure one moment after the last moment) by Frantisek Emmert, “Lunula“ from Roberto Vetrano or the amazing composition by the Austrian composer Peter Ablinger “Weiss“ for flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano under the interpretation of the Pierrot Lunaire Ensemble from Vienna. Ablinger’s compositions astounded the audience with its overall affiance, its use of the most refined timbres and its perfect use of pauses and stillness. There were moments when I was sorry that modern technology is unable to record the “held breaths” of the audience.

Musically spellbinding, expressively contemplative and also with convincing expression of intellectual and humanistic ideas include various compositions such as two compositions by Jiri Teml “Trio eufonico“ and “Epigramy“ (Epigrams), “Sblížení II“ (Approximation II) and “Vzývání IV“ (Invocation IV) from Milan Slavicky, melodrama “Diptych“ by Petr Pokorny, symphonic aquarelle “Jediná naděje“ (The Only Hope) by Ctirad Kohoutek, “Dinosaurus“ by A. Nordheim or “Trio giocoso“ by Ivan Kurz...

...and I could name many other compositions whose titles would overflow the constraints of this review by composers such as Henryk H. Jablonski, William Toutant, Domenico Tagliente, Grazyna Bacewicz, Arnost Parsch, Marco Della Sciucca, Z. Bargielski, G. F. Haase, Katerina Ruzickova, Francesco Paradiso, Vittorio Testa, Frank Zabel, M. Marek, Pavel Zemek, percussionist and composer Tomas Ondrusek, Juraj Benes, Vladimir Godar or compositions under the interpretation of the Brno choir Vox Iuvenalis by Vytautas Miskinis, Richard Toensing or Petr Eben.

Festival was also crowned by some outstanding performances of interpreters: from soloist we must make a special reference about Daniel and Dolly Kessner from USA (alt flute, bass flute, piano and cembalo), organist and composer Giamila Berre and saxophonist Vittorio Cerasa from Italy, accordionist Julie Hirzbergerova from Germany, pianist Elena Letnanova and violoncellist-performer Jozef Luptak from the Slovak Republic, Polish organist Waclaw Golonka (which is living and teaching at Prag Academy). And Czech artist such as violinist Zdenka Vaculovicova, cembalist Ilona Trtkova or the abore mentioned percussionist Tomas Ondrusek.

The most exceptional ensemble interpreters were Trio eufonico and Ensemble Moens from Prague, Ars Incognita under the direction of Emil Skotak and mixed choir Vox iuvenalis with conductor Jan Ocetek from Brno and the already mentioned Pierrot Lunaire Ensemble from Vienna.

Composer styles, methods and techniques exemplified in this years dramaturgy were not as widespread as in previous years. There were many compositions pronouncedly timbre or timbre influenced, some compositions on the basis of dodecaphony, serialized or on the contrary on an aleatory basis. Some of the compositions were based on pure, non organized or centralised enriched atonality. Others showed that the composer did not adhere to one primary compositional technique. Is this all postmodernism?

Contemporary composer and music theoretic, the emeriti Professor of the Janacek Academy of Music in Brno and the Music Academy of Prag, Ctirad Kohoutek gave a lecture at the festival. It was interesting and enlightening as a reflection of Brno music life, Brno as a center of compositional and interpretional pioneer experiments during 60-80-ties of the 20th century of the Czechoslovakia of that time. Along with his lecture there was heard “Jedina nadeje” (The Only Hope) his most interesting work, a musical painting from the recording by the orchestra “Panteon”.

Also fascinating was the afternoon with the composer and music theoretic from Brno and Professor at the Janacek Music Academy in Brno, Alois Pinos. During an art show he had an opportunity to share memories from the sixties of team compositions and along with his speech the composition “Divertissement” by Alois Pinos, Arnost Parsch, Rudolf Ruzicka and Milos Stedron was played and then a piece based on technical collage and assembly “Analy avantgardy dokoran aneb vec Cage” (Annals of the Avant-garde wide open or Cause Cage) by a trio of composers Alois Pinos, Ivo Medek and Milos Stedron was also heard. Their never ending flow of musical gags and word games left the listeners with tears of laughter.

The music festival was completed with four art shows. One of the artists is the notable Slovakian academic painter, Eva Trizuljakova, who systematically dedicates her art to various biblical themes and regularly publishes her thoughts on post-modern society.

The art shows of the married couple Marie and Josef Docekal, otherwise known for their restoration work also took place along with Vaclav Vaculovic who again showed water colour paintings, many layered abstract paintings, large scale paintings, and also small fine graphics and other art objects.

Jan Grossmann
(the author is the Czech composer and associate professor at the Zilina University in the Slovak Republic and at the Ostrava University in the Czech Republic)