Jan Grossmann / for magazine COMPOSER USA /
Forfest Kroměříž 2009
Finished the second decade
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The 20th anniversary of the Forfest Festival passed quickly like running water. And I cannot count further if the festival runs ten days or twenty-four or forty-seven or even fifty-four?
Regularly Forfest began on Friday‘s afternoon the last week of the month before and ended on Sundays at 10 pm the last week of June, in the last years. The current Forfest was prolongated by four concerts and one exhibition two weeks before the official opening (June 5 and 12) and was further prolongated with one exhibition three weeks later after the solemn end of the festival (July 21 -28 ). The main body of the festival run in the days of June 19-26.
Comparing with the last years, the festival 2009 expanded also out of Kroměříž, Some actions took place in the smaller cities of the Kroměříž region. This time the first six concerts and mentioned exhibition took place in Olomouc, in historical spaces of the St. Wenceslas Cathedral and Mozarteum in Archbishop’s Museum. Further in the Hall of the Conservatory of Lutheran Academy, and in the Gallery G, while the other exhibition with the opening on the 21th of July was in the Studio beyond the Castle in Bratislava.
The main week of the festival used, as always, the attractive and tourist‘s favourite historical objects of Kroměříž – the Assembly Hall of Archbishop’s Castle, as well as the Churches of St. Maurice, and St. John Baptist. Unique memorials, incorporated in the list of UNESCO, –were also the places of the festival such as Podzámecká Garden, Rotund of Chateau Gardens, and Museum of Kroměříž, The Artus Gallery and Garden Studio of the Vaculovič’s family. The festival’s Press conference run in the Ritual Hall of the Renaissance edifice of the City Office.
The artistic interdisciplinary character – the contemporary musical and fine arts, are the most characteristic signs of the festival since its origin even if not of the same value. The 20th year of the Forfest emancipated the both arts, multiplied and clearly profiled out the exhibitions. There were no more than one or two, haphazardly accompanying, selected fine arts actions, but the project of three autonomous exhibitions with the unifying idea, each one in the other metropolis on „the travel map“ of the Festival.
The opening on the June 5th in the Gallery G in Olomouc: „Letters To Heaven“ – were installations, photography, pictures, and sculptures of contemporary Slovak artists;
The opening on June 21st in Gallery of Artuš in Kroměříž were photography’s of the Slovak artist Vladimíra Sidorová;
1. The opening on July 21st was in the Studio Beyond the Castle in Bratislava: Václav Vaculovič (Czech Republic) – „Abyss of Time“, a tribute to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (from the private collections of Associate Professor, PhD. E. Letňanová, the soloist of one festival concert).
A significant part of the 20th Forfest was the fifth three-day long bienale of the colloquium under the title „Spiritual Streams In the Contemporary Art“, focused on the Multimedial Overlapping.) The interest in the active participation came from the several European countries. The colloquium was moderated by the Swiss/German musicologist, flautist, and director, PhD. Andreas Kröper, in the Museum of Kroměříž.
A touch with a completely different ideational world was a project of three performances with the American conceptualist Lewis Gesner („Thousand Slashes“, „Drawing of Scores“, „Possibility of Impossible“). The quality of these performances were in the area which I could not identify, and their aesthetic value addressed to me on the level of simple-minded fun. (The sense declared by the title looked to me more as a wish than the reached goal.)
The musical action has been further dominating on the Forfest. This year the festival was funded on three pillars – on recitals, author’s concerts, musical hearings - surrounded by other productions.
Recitals: there were three ones for organ, two for violin, two for violoncello, one for cimbalom (dulcimer), one for viola, for piano, for voice, for flute, and one for saxophone connected with the electronics.
A recital of the Slovak violinist Milan Paľa and his piano accompanying partner Ondrej Olos (Bokes, Emmert) – was a strong performance worth of any world‘s festival. An excellent interpreter would be lost without excellent compositions. And Paľa made an excellent choice. „La Folia“ for violin solo by Vladimír Bokes – was a confrontational dense music with the material for a supreme Beethoven-like sonata, presented on the limits of instrument’s possibilities, arising a feeling of ecstasy, and by the persuasion radiating interpreter, who can brake the string and his instrument among abrupt brakes between the wild furioso and silent, gentle flagiolets. The selectons from the eleven-part „The Last Judgement“, a reflexion on the Evangelium of St. Matheus and St. Lucas, for solo violin by František G. Emmert – was extremely expressive composition, loaded with matter, similarly like in the case of Bokes, who used all possibilities of his instrument. Paľa mastered this piece with an amazing lightness, bravura, and self-evidence. Similarly, there were reversals, turns. Against the firmly and heroically grasped expression there was built a mercy, favor, expressed by a gentle and soft modality. Against the aroused passion there was juxtapositioned a soft prayer-like chant, and hues of colors. The author prooved that the form and tectonics held well firmly and elastically at all variety and vanity of his inventions. In the next emotionally pointed Emmert’s composition – the Fourth Sonata Mission“ in five movements for violin and piano, I seriously began to think over the absolute contradiction between the personality of the author and character of his pieces. During the performance of this ultrafurioso piece, the theatrical words, like God’s whip, last judgment day, this contradiction came to my mind. In the second movement I was enchanted by the fine music, intermingled by juicy, anti-noise cantabile, and graded wavy lines. The fourth movement was full of a powerful expressive span, a strong stream of affetuoso, and beautifully sounding pizzicatos in pianissimo with the dropping silent tones of piano. In the end, a beautiful angelic music sounded. All this spoke about an experienced drama quasi, about catharsis and forgiveness in the soul of the author. Nonetheless, looking into the score I was taken out of my mistake about programmatic music of these movements, possibly about their apparent programmness: Aria I and II, Preludio, Fuga, Ciaccona.
(About the other phenomenal performance giving testimony about a unique level of an young Slovak interpretation art, I know, sorry, only from the enthusiastic repercussions of my musical friends: about the recital of Slovak pianist Ivan Buffa with the pieces of Slovak and Czech composers.)
Among extraordinary recitals concerning their quality, deliberately I do not mention the performance of the baritone Petr Matuszek with a mezzo-soprano Markéta Dvořáková, with the pianist Roman Pallas. M. Dvořáková possesses an interesting voice fund. She captivated, for instance, by the interpretation of Marek Kopytman‘s and Miloslav Kabeláč’s pieces, but it was difficult for me to measure her qualities with those phenomenal dispositions of P. Matuszek. His interpretation, for instance, of György Kurtág‘s „Three Songs to Poems by János Pilinszky“, op. 11 (a gamut of various ways of tone creation, inspired by the Orient, which were not assignated even in detail by the author, but were finished by the interpreter, by changing nasal tones and overtones on one tone. The cultivated gradations were built out, sometimes with dramatic operatic chant (in the piano a contrast of a simple accompaniment and virtuosic passages and colorfully sounding silent areas) affected me so much that I found the master in the intermission and asked him to show me the music. But also the Invocations by Piňos to Psalms 130, 121 a 103, for baritone solo (urgent, passionate adoration, dramatic tapering in the Psalm103, optimistic even childish playful sounding.) It was a reminiscence on the doyen of the Brno compositional Modernism, a kind and wise man, who among us on the Forfest the last year. Also, especially „Drei Liebeslieder“ by Witold Szalonek (very silent, free and gentle composition, interestingly used microintervals, striking dragging up of the vocal by the piano, many layered, and sometimes with the impressionistic color, a deep humbleness, and veracity in sounding; in the piano we heard monophonous methods in equal rhythmical values, under a long pedaling, witty omittings sometimes, perfectly interconnected the piano and barytone parts) was unforgettable interpretation.
The recitals of the professor of organ at the Prague Academy of Music, Jaroslav Tůma, marked themselves out by an excellent level (Tůma, Jirák, Reiner, Glass, Pärt). Brno violoncellist, Jan Škrdlík, with the pianist Petra Besa-Pospíšilová (J. Novák, Matys, Martinů) – sorry, I know only from the talking with my friends and the Slovak soloist Enikö Ginzery, living in Germany (Hespos, Kurtág, Janáček, Brandmüller, Oliveira).
The recital of Tůma was built on ineffective, but structurally thoughtfully constructed pieces. The most captivating was the Tuma’s introductory „Elegy For Valdštejn“, dedicated to the city of Cheb, with flowing chords, two to three-layered, interestingly differentiated registration, and „Three Preludes“ by Karl Reiner (especially the first prelude of passacaglia-like character). I am not sure, if in the programming of the concert are placed happily the compositions of the same expression, with another two pieces of (eternal) minimalistic composition by Philip Glass „Mad Rush“ and Årvo Pärt „Mein Weg hat Gipfel und Wellentäler“.
The recital of Enikö Ginzery I would place among excellent ones, except for two matters. It seems to me, that she programmed also the pieces with which she dazzled two years before. If it would be not so successful, maybe I would not notice this. And why did the artist devote so many minutes of her precious time to reading and talking about the history of her instrument? Ginzery is too excellent interpreter, in order to speak on an educational information which can be found in the literature or via internet.
I have valued the programming in the recital of a young organist Hana Ryšavá. It was not only interesting to hear her program, based on the women-composers(Demessieux, Barraine, Gubajdulina, Boulanger, Diener), but I could taste the interesting and unknown pieces to me „Te Deum“, op. 11 by Jeanne Demessieux, „Hell und Dunkel“ by Sofia Gubajdulina and „Prelude And Fugue On Theme Of Jewish Prayer“ Elsa Barraine, with an exception of a compositionally poor „Fiesta“ by Diener.
On the recital of the violoncellist Štěpán Filípek with the violinist Anna Veverková, and electronical cooperation of a young composer Jana Vöröšová, I was captivated by the world premiere of the final piece „Turum-Durum“ for violin, violoncello and electronics by J. Vöröšová. It was a strong and fascinating piece, in which the author worked with the electronics even elementally She similarly led imilarly the line of „real“ violin and cello. In the whole, the two-pole equallization of the theme and expression, ending in a blissed consonnance, were attractive on this composition. An excellent composition. The world premiere of the timbral „Acrimonious Humoresques“(according to A. P. Tschechov) for violoncello solo, from the main concert protagonist, was captivating too, next to proven (attested) compositions by Penderecki, Gubajdulina, and Petr Pokorný (by the performance of „Four Nocturnes“ for violoncello solo as a recollection on the recently deceased composer Petr Pokorný, a frequent guest of the Forfest).
The only disappointment was the violin recital of the Polish violinist Anna Zielińska. I was enthusiastic about her performance, two years ago, of high quality, inclining to creative way toward New Music. Who knows the well-known repertory of masterpieces by Reger – „Suite For Viola Solo“ or Stravinski‘s – „Elegy“, could not conceal his disappointment. Her reputation (Zielińska) was saved by the „Polish Caprice“ by Grażyna Bacewicz and an exquisite composition with the grading waltz caprice „Głosa“ by her mother Lidia Zielińska. (An apology for an unfavorable impression could be a noisy, aggressive rock music from the close discoteque, penetrating even through a meter-thick stone walls of the St. Maurice Cathedral.) This event has been accuring each year, by the mistake of The District Office in Kroměříž in the time of a significant international festival in the city.
From the recitals I would like to mention the recital of a Duo Messieri- Selva from Italy with the pieces by Riley, Cage, and mainly Messieri’s piece „Forever“ for soprano saxophone, triangle and electronics, which sounded in the world premiere, but I could not hear it.
At the end of recitals I would like to mention the organ recital, the final concert of Forfest, of Vincent Rigot from France. He not only captivated my mind by the French program (Alain, Duruflé, Escaich, Messiaen), in which he incorporated Eben’s beautifully elastically and colorfully sounding chorale „Oh, The Great God“, but he surprised at the end of concert by speaking excellent Czech language. In „Litanies“, and mainly in „Scherzo“ by Jehan Alain, he presented his bravura technique, a colorful invention, almost beyond the litanies‘ limit.) For instance, a mobile fifthish ostinato at the end of „Scherzo“ sounded excellently. I would like to mention „The Five Verses on Victims of Paschali laudes“ by Thierry Escaich (an excellent work with agogics, phrasing, caesuras. This composition breathed and filled us with enthusiasm. Nevertheless, the greatest experience came from „Dieu parmi nous“ („The God Among Us“) by Olivier Messiaen (an ideationally rich piece, played with splendour, bravura, and involvement) with phantastic metrorhythm, phrasing, register solutions, micro and macro-tectonics, and with an excellent chord and harmonical progressions. Exquisite modelling of consonances and dissonances. The interpret became a „director of ideas“.
The author’s concerts. The only real author’s program was a retro concert from the compositions of Associate Professor of music theory, Vít Zouhar, from the Palacky University of Olomouc, in Moravia, a part of Czech Republic. Prevailingly, two author’s concerts were dedicated to the compositions of the professor František G. Emmert at the JAMU University in Brno, and one a retro- half concert of pieces by the Prague composer and a regular guest of Forfest, Jan Vrkoč.
The compositions by V. Zouhar cannot be envisioned without the cooperation with the Ensemble Damian from the city of Olomouc, under the artistic direction of Tomáš Hanzlík and two soloists Jan Mikušek and Stefan Kunath (countertenors), and without enthusiastic echo of listeners (this time there were the final standing ovations). Zouhar’s style, coming out from the minimalism and transformed into an original manuscript, was reminded by the older and new compositions, by the cantata „Pendulum“, „Mente“ for chamber ensemble, electronics, and video (a beautiful timbre piece with expressively minimalistic progressions, but with equal form, and very subtle fascinating sounds). „Ariosi“ for countertenor and strings (Baroque periodicity, minimalistic ostinati, cantata-like character, harmony progressions on the base of cadence), remind us on his successful chamber opera „Coronide“. „It Is All“ (1992, for the opera re-elaborated in 2009), and „Coronide e morta“ (prevailing countertenor duet and capp. in the Neo-Renaissance style, were interrupted with Baroque passages, and alternating strings). The composition from this year was „The Garden’s Of Heavenly Delights“ for soloists and chamber ensemble( were the silent, freely flowing harmonies, reminding us on church songs, rather in early Classical style, with a clear tonal anchorage and neoclassical, enormously consonating harmonical methods, and meditative character). Zouhar beautifully worked with phrases and caesuras, his composition „was breathing“, was internal and captivating, even to the most uneducated listener.
The author‘s half-evening of Jan Vrkoč. His compositions sounded in the frame of a recital of the young Prague interpreters – violinist Růžena Sršňová and pianist Anna Stará. In their rendition I mention the playful „Pocket Sonata“ in four movements for violin and piano by Jan Novák and then the Vrkoč’s compositions, which sounded life and some of them from the tape. Sound and compositional discharges do not pertain to the characteristics of Vrkoč’s works, but EA composition „Advent“ for violin and tape seemed to me being not an end in itself, rather two-planned, and drawing up, a melodic counterpoint was primary). Two movements from the „Concerto For Violin And Great Orchestra“ by Vrkoč (was a symphonism, typical for the Classicists of the 20th century, associated, for instance, the peak symphonies of Shostakovich, but also a strong philosophical accent, the main gravitation point was in melody, and orchestra made a strong melodic support by tempo, structure, and colorfully separated thematic blocks, and compositionally interesting cadence) and already mentioned „Verticales“ and „The Country With the Rainbow“(the modality was creatively applied in vertical way and horizontally, giving out a testimony about his talent and great imaginativeness inventionality and mind of this modest author.
The listening sessions. The unique recordings were moderated by, Zdenka Vaculovičová, the professor at the Conservatory Of Music of Lutheran Academy in Olomouc. We were listening to the well-known spiritual works of Årvo Pärt „Passio“ and Krzysztof Penderecki „Lukas Passions“ pertaining today to the treasure of the world spiritual works of our age, and „Lichtwellen“ by the Rumanian woman composer Violeta Dinescu.
The other concerts.
Amael Piano Trio from Slovenia (Tatjana Ognjanovich – piano, Volodja Balzhalorsky – violin, Damir Hamidulin – violoncello) prepared two world and three Czech premieres of their fellow-countrymen. Their persuasive absorption for the creative poetics and style of each composition enabled us to taste out those compositions, A such Neoromantic, but honestly through-composed composition, filled with non-theatrical tragics, was „Maestoso Lugubre“ by Lucian Marija Shkerjanc, and almost Brahms-like dense and almost sentimental „Music for Lancaster 2007“ (a piece dedicated to this Trio, a world premiere) by Steven R. Mento. But the composition „Something Wild“ for violin solo by Nenad Firsht breaked the musical process into dramatic level with a part which alternated a neo-folklore with the timbre touches and with toccata-like motorics. „Five short pieces“ by Milko Lazar, which were dedicated to interpreters of the Trio, placed against the shorter contrasting characteristic pictures ,ranging from virtuosic, effective (the first and last movements), to serious, silent, and pensive and minimalistic repercussions, interestingly applied in the repetitive harmonies. „Translation“ by Hugh Levick for piano trio, sounding in a world premiere, was written interestingly, dense, colorful, with a special sacral expression, but I was not satisfied with this piece. As though running from nothing to nothing. The piece used interestingly the statics, rather in sense of reverence, intensive changes of expression, tempo, and dynamics. It was maybe a mistake of my inconcentration or tiredness after a heavy day, that I began to be bored soon. Except for a Trio by Alfred Schnittke.
At the end I would like to speak on a fine musical nourishment: on a performance of The Ensemble of Brno Soloists, under the buttons of Dáša Briškárová and Ondřej Tajovský, alternating. There were sounding the other two representative works by František G. Emmert and the world premiere of the concertant work by American composer Richard Toensing, which was composed especially for the Forfest and dedicated to Elena Letňanová.
In the Emmert’s compositions it was a completely other Emmert who stunned us a day before in the performance of fascinating Milan Paľa and Ondrej Olos. A day before it was a wild, unchained, almost devilish Emmert, so to speak. With the Brno Soloists it was a fond, sensitive Emmert and gently poetic and contemplative. But the cantata „ The Time Of Messiah“ was graded out, and again tender. In the chamber oratorio „Carress(Stroke) By Sight“ (Litúf be mabát) on the original Hebrew texts, it was again excited and passionate Emmert, but not in a wild boisterousness as a day before, but in loftiness and magnificence. The raising, excited declamatory section, appeared, also a fire of inventions, stirring rhythms, interchanging motives and binds. An excellent sonic piece with many layers, and instrumentation perfection. The form and tectonics were attacked by ceaseless gradations and subito / lower?/ lowerings of dynamics, sudden changes of expression, dynamics, and registers, but the form held together. The author knows how to work inventionally with the unisono, let us remind on Miloslav Ištvan and Pavel Zemek’s unisono) and in cultivating way and naturally to use the microintervalic tones. Also the Toensing‘s „Concertino For Elena“ for piano and instrumental ensemble was a unique, rich, and exciting composition. The concertino was composed with the goal to use the pianist mastery of the soloist Elena Letňanová from Bratislava, to whom the concertino was dedicated also, to her interpretational experience with the contemporary music and an extraordinary ability of interpreting the work from the aesthetical, semantic, and philosophical views. It is pity that the author could not be at this world premiere. Letňanová modeled out an immense colorful, maybe timbre sound pliant object, in cooperation with the ensemble and director Tajovský, in which the explosions of emotions competed with the subtly weaved silent areas (surfaces). With ultra-silent chords, and as though bare solo piano, the composition ended.
The useful statistics of this – year festival:
11 world premieres of Czech, Swedish, American, German, and Italian composers;
14 Czech premieres of Slovenian, Slovak, Czech, American, French, Polish, Austrian, and Japanese composers;
On the whole amount of 18 „life“ concerts shared 13 and half recitals, one and half of the author’s concerts and three other concerts, with addition of three „not-life“ listening sessions.
The survey of the past twenty Forfests with a slight statement of being not perfect:
339 concerts;
157 world premieres, from them were 111 from the Czech and 46 from foreign authors;
374 Czech premieres;
121 author’s concerts.
Performed:
320 foreign soloists, ensembles and choirs from 22 countries – Austria, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Rumania, Italy, England, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, France, Israel, Canada, Japan, and The USA.
Festival commentaries:
8 Czech television sessions;
52 Czech radio sessions;
Countless reviews in the Czech journals, Opus Musicum, Hudební rozhledy, Muzikus, His Voice, Czech Music, Harmonie;
Countless radio articles in regional press;
Many review and radio articles in foreign journals The Composer (USA), MusicWorks (Canada), British Music (Great Britain), Treffpunkt:Musik (Germany), Hudobný život (Musical Life) (Slovakia).
Perhaps, somebody once will try to make a more sophisticated inventory of the Forfest. And also about the preceding so – called „sedánky“ (in English sittings, sessions).
Jan Grossmann
