On 7 April, the New Scene of the National Theatre in Prague presented the long-awaited premiere of the opera adaptation of Ivan Klíma’s mystery novel The Sufferings of Prince Sternenhoch. Its author, primarily a scenic music composer and musical autodidact Ivan Acher (*1976) had already written music for the book’s theatre adaptation at Divadlo Komedie eleven years ago; … Read more
Opera povera ensemble introduced a second part of their experimental project Echo – Metamorphoses, subtitled “All that connects sound and space can become an opera.” It was created by Rocc (*1979), Slovenian opera director and opera povera’s art director, and composer and musicologist Vít Zouhar (*1966). “Content-wise, we tried to return to the original inspiration of the very first … Read more
As would be expected, the 10 days and 22 concerts of the 9th year of the contemporary music biennale Ostrava days included several Czech premieres. From those by Czech authors they were first of all the chamber Nothing is Free by Petr Cígler, September by Petr Bakla and The Long Sentence II by Michal Rataj. All of them were performed during … Read more
As already a couple of times in the past, this year of the Prague Spring festival, too, decided to hold one of its concerts at the National Technical Museum. In collaboration with the Faculty of Electrical Engineering of the Czech Technical University in Prague, it presented a programme consisting of four pieces by contemporary composers, all of … Read more
Composer Michal Rataj was one of the guests of Polish contemporary electroacoustic music festival Nowa Muzyka w Starym Ratuszu. Three of his works were presented at a concert on 8th December at the Old Town Hall in Gdańsk. The first piece on the program was Winter Shadowy. This composition, which made it to the finals of the … Read more
Held regularly from as early as 1969, the Carinthischer Sommer festival in Villach, the metropolis of the federal state of Carinthia, is one of the best known and most popular festivals in Austria. This year among those representing the contemporary music scene was the composer Ondřej Adámek (*1979), one of the festival’s Artists in Residence for 2016. … Read more
