https://www.polyharmonie.cz/forfest-kromeriz-35/

Forfest - International festival of contemporary arts with spiritual orientation was founded in Kroměříž on the initiative of the husband and wife Zdenka and Václav Vaculovič almost immediately after the Velvet Revolution. Its founders came up with the idea of ​​creating a festival of artistic creation in Moravia dealing with music and visual arts, created in close connection especially with religious themes. Something like this was so noticeably missing in our Czech culture after the revolutionary period.

Forfest takes place every year, always at the beginning of summer in the beautiful surroundings of the city of Kroměříž, the capital of Haná, which can boast of a rich musical tradition created for centuries mainly by church institutions. Around them, they created an abundance of valuable monuments, not only musical, but also natural, artistic and architectural.

This year was the 35th year of this festival. It is organized in modest conditions, but has the highest artistic and ethical goals. During so many years, it created many unique artistic values ​​and created a rich tradition..

A total of 19 performances were included in the Forfest concert cycle, at which 12 compositions were performed in the world premiere. The most played author was Michal Novenko, we listened to four of his compositions. The work of Jan Novák and Martin Flašar received a total of three versions. The compositions of Bohuslav Martinů, Jiří Matys, Jevgenie Iršai, Massimiliano Messieri, František Fiala, Markéta Brothánková, Michalis Andronika and Karel Hiner were performed twice.

However, Forfest is not only concerts, it also includes other types of events. The Sdružení Q – Brno Exhibition was opened in the Silesian Ostrava gallery in Ostrava on Wednesday, June 12, and lectures held in the Kroměřížska Museum were noteworthy. On Saturday, June 22, it was possible to listen to Ivan Bierhanzl, who told about the fate of the important Czech conductor Karel Ančerl. American composer and musicologist Laurence Sherr gave a systematic lecture on the fate of Jewish musicians in Terezín during the Nazi oppression on Sunday, June 23.

The traditional Conversations on Music also took the form of lectures, which are essentially medallions of composers who have made a significant mark in the history of Forfest. There were a total of nine of these Interviews and they took place either in the Jan Blahoslav Choir or in the Garden Atelier. Six of them were dedicated to the deceased (Miloslav Ištvan, Jiří Matys, František Emmert, Alois Piňos, Josef Adamík, Ilja Zeljenka), they were expertly led by Zdeňka Vaculovičová, three Interviews were organized with the artists present (Vít Zouhar, Jan Grossmann and Jan Vrkoč) .

As a biennial, this year a colloquium was held as part of Forfest with the broadly conceived topic of Specifics of the perception of contemporary art. In three morning sessions, traditionally moderated by Slovak musicologist and pianist Dr. Elena Letňanová, there were twenty contributions from domestic and foreign participants. Thanks to the long-term and systematic preparation of the colloquium, all lectures are gathered and published in a special edition of Forfest.