Every odd year of the 21st century, at the turn of August and September, music that is not easy to define takes over Ostrava. A simple box is labeled “contemporary classic”, but a string of adjectives is more common. Seeking, adventurous. Or uncompromising, focused? Or more often: experimental, alternative.
Trying to categorize the content of the Ostrava Days of New Music festival, the next year of which starts this Thursday, August 24, brings difficulties. Just like the music itself. What am I listening to and what meanings does it have? Why does this irritate me but fascinate me at the same time?
Similar questions may come to the mind of anyone who visits the biennial founded by the composer and conductor Petr Kotík.
These are currencies that music outside of the mainstream can afford to pamper. And even if the line between a statement freed from economic pressures and elitist “art for art’s sake” is sometimes thin, Ostrava Days has been occupying the first bank for a long time.
This year’s 12th edition, which will last until September 2 and will offer, for example, the opera Playing Trump by composer Bernhard Lang inspired by former US President Donald Trump, continues a long-standing concept. Large orchestral concerts will be complemented by chamber work, a choral concert in the cathedral, more performative or improvisational evenings and also two marathons: electronic and acoustic music. The second one will last eight hours and is the shorter one. In addition, there will be happenings or the so-called flash mob opera – a project by the composer František Chaloupka, in which two female singers will race around Masaryk Square on e-scooters, while four saxophonists will use hoverboards.
A tradition of breaking traditions
The names of great composers Iannis Xenakis or Bruno Maderna, protected by history, appear in the program, but the emphasis is not placed on them: their works stand next to the premieres of contemporary creators of all generations, including the youngest.
They are residents of the Institute of Ostrava Days, a kind of summer school of musical creativity, which is closely connected with the festival. This year, 35 people from 16 countries are participating. They go to workshops, lectures, and some get to perform their scores as an equal part of the event. These are not students, but often graduates of prestigious music schools.
According to one of the participants, Maria Nečasová, there is a supportive atmosphere between them this year as well. They all meet at the same table with the lecturers during lunch and dinner. “Where does it work if you talk to composers in a completely different environment than in a lecture hall? You are not so afraid to ask questions about everything you are interested in,” Nečasová illustrates.
Look for Kotík behind everything
“Without barriers, hierarchies and without prejudices”, it says on the opening page of the biennale, and it is clear that the organizers are not only targeting listeners with their motto. They will also hear compositions by lecturers, among whom are Czech artists Miroslav Srnka and Michal Rataj, as well as Pulitzer Prize winner Raven Chacon, Serbian artist Ana Sokolović or 83-year-old Roscoe Mitchell, founder of the important Art Ensemble of Chicago.
Their works and those of five dozen other composers will be interpreted by violinist Hana Kotková, clarinetist Gareth Davis, pianists Daan Vandewalle and Miroslav Beinhauer, conductors Jiří Rožeň with Bruno Ferrandis, in addition to members of the chamber ensemble Ostrava banda and the Ostrava New Orchestra founded in 2017, and others.
Festival founder Petr Kotík last month at a memorial concert in Prague’s Silence Memorial. | Photo: CTK
The choice of guests always depends on the founder, now eighty-one-year-old Petr Kotík, who emigrated to the United States in 1969. He still partially lives in New York today, and the Ostrava Days became a bridge between the Czech Republic and the USA.
Although the festival, which alternates with the New Opera Days every other year, has built a community on a Central European scale, the core remains Kotík’s contacts.
The final concert of five world premieres called High Noon, scheduled for Saturday, September 2, best describes it. It will offer news from regular local guests, experienced composers who are actively creating even after their eighties. In addition to Kotík and Mitchell, there are Phill Niblock, who found inspiration for his rattling compositions often working with the same constant sound while listening to his own motorcycle, as well as Christian Wolff, who is a close collaborator of John Cage, and the versatile Alvin Curran. He also introduces himself as a pianist.
“Like the tracks on which trains run,” writes Kotík in their new joint manifesto, “it is the infrastructure that inspires and enables the creation of substantial musical works.”
The Ostrava Days of New Music alternate with the Days of New Opera. Three years ago, they staged, among other things, an opera by Marko Keprt called Hibiki, Hibiki, rise (pictured). | Photo: Martin Popelář
It remains to be seen if their news will be the essential parts, or rather the strengthening of the infrastructure, the entire underbelly of relationships, meeting performers and visitors, mutual inspiration, cooperation, but also animosity. The manifesto, which objects to the conservative management of cultural institutions, is to be published in its entirety at the concert. Those interested will be able to attach their signature below it.
“The problem is conservative managers who cling to the past tooth and nail and see no reason why things that worked yesterday should not work the same way today and tomorrow,” Kotík suggested in an interview with Lidové noviny, where he called for the introduction of news. He also mentions that the world of classical music is changing after the pandemic. “The Metropolitan Opera today has a hard time selling out Verdi or Puccini. But it easily sells out Wagner, which is very interesting. The whole operation is changing, and very quickly,” he says in an interview.
Invitation to the table
The world is small, and in the world of “today’s music”, as the subtitle of the biennale reads, this is doubly true. A listener who visits a concert of this kind for the first time may feel a certain discomfort – if only because of the impression that everyone here knows each other.
The Ostrava Days team knows this very well, which is why they have built a pleasant, warm environment. During the festival days, hundreds of people with interests in all possible types of experiences, sounds and music meet at one cultural table in Trojhalí Karolina, the Plato gallery, the new campus of the University of Ostrava in Černá louka and other places.
Video: Sample from the opera Playing Trump
This year, the Ostrava Days will present, among other things, the opera Playing Trump by Bernhard Lang, inspired by former US President Donald Trump. | Video: Staatsoper Hamburg
