As part of the bicentenary celebrations of Gregor Mendel’s birth in July, the Brno Contemporary Orchestra will also join in the congratulations. On Wednesday at St. Augustine’s Church, the orchestra will play several pieces by composers whose initials of their names have been transformed into a secret cipher. The concert will be conducted by Pavel Šnajdr.
“Most people today believe the media and the statistics that shape and support them. Everyone knows what is right, what a nice room should look like, what is fun and what is creative, where we should like our food, and where it is really beautiful. We know who’s a great artist, who’s a great scientist and, simply, every time a celebrity burps. We live on averaged facts which we can euphemistically call democracy or the golden middle road. But demonstrably, the world has worked differently for a couple of thousand years, and rather than the average, it has been shaped and profiled by outsiders, sometimes below average and sometimes above average. If we want to average, we have to turn our back on the human aspect. The world is still illuminated by the three rays that illuminate reality – science, faith, and art. In all its forms. This was true in the days of Mendel, who instead of living a normal, orderly, respectable life, observed the weather and the colors of pea blossoms and was considered a total exotic, and it is still so today, when we can program a bug or name the other sexes but still have a problem with otherness. Science knows no “what ifs” but tells us about the past which gives us lessons and experience; faith also knows no “what ifs” but opens us up to the possibility of a better world and also the meaning of our limitless existence. Art acknowledges the “what if”, but also fails to realize it, and so it is often more real, more beautiful, but also more painful than all realities combined. We have selected pieces that may perhaps evoke Mendel’s tortuous journey towards faith, science, and art, which undoubtedly, like the three rays, illuminate reality but do not in any way adapt it to anything. We have chosen pieces that are mostly unheard in Brno, that do not lie, and that will captivate you,” dramaturge Viktor Pantůček explains his selection.
The festival concert entitled “Science, Faith, Art” will take place on Wednesday, 20 July 2022 at 19:00 in the Church of St. Augustine (náměstí Míru, Brno).
By "secret" cipher we mean the instructions for the dramaturgy of the concert. It will appear when you look at the concert program – see below. It is again a kind of intellectual pun by our brilliant dramaturge Viktor Pantůček. Especially the final Ligeti piece, conceived for a hundred mechanical metronomes, will be spectacular for the listeners and probably for us as well. That being said, I would like to use this medium to appeal that we are still a few short of a hundred, so if anyone could lend us some, we would be delighted. Fortunately, the vast majority have been loaned to us by the Berg Orchestra in Prague, for which we thank you very much once again! This time the concert will be without tickets, and it is supposed to be very hot, so it will be ideal to come to the church to cool off!!" says Pavel Šnajdr, the artistic director and conductor of the ensemble.
“The concert will feature music by composers who were alive at the time of the church’s construction in the 1930s, when the Augustinian Order of Brno built it on its land as part of the 1500th anniversary of the death of St Augustine. The concert takes place as part of the Mendel Festival, which combines science, faith and entertainment and started this Sunday, 17 July, and will last until 24 July on Mendel Square in Brno and elsewhere,” said Matěj Hollan, one of the main organizers of the festival.
CONCERT PROGRAM:
THREE RAYS THAT ILLUMINATE REALITY
SCIENCE, FAITH, ART
20 July 2022 at 19:00, St. Augustine’s Church, náměstí Míru, Brno
Olivier Messiaen - Oiseaux exotiques (1955) for piano and chamber ensemble
Pavel Zemek Novák - Homage to Jesus. Concerto for English horn and chamber ensemble
Luigy Dallapiccola – Parole di San Paolo (1964)
George Enescu – Chamber symphony in E major for 12 instruments (1945)
György Ligeti - Poème symphonique (1962)
Musicians:
Irena Troupová – soprano
Kateřina Hebelková – mezzo-soprano
Helena Weiser – piano
Brno Contemporary Orchestra - Pavel Šnajdr – conductor
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