Magdalena Kožená invites you to a Concentus Moraviae festival full of music and humour

7 December 2017, 12:00
Magdalena Kožená invites you to a Concentus Moraviae festival full of music and humour

Magdalena Kožená, patroness of the Concentus Moraviae festival, today will take the stage of Brno’s Boby Centre with Ondřej Havelka and his Melody Makers. This benefit concert for the festival will jointly promote the songs of Cole Porter and at the same time invite us to the next year. The event will also include the christening of the Cole Porter CD with songs which will be performed by Kožená and Havelka’s Melody Makers in a premiere as part of this year’s Concentus Moraviae festival.

We borrowed the subtitle of this gala concert, Let’s Misbehave, from one of Porter’s hits. That is because it is a perfect prelude to the theme of the twenty-third Concentus Moraviae festival, which will be dedicated to humour in music, in a programme from the Belgian musicologist Jelle Dierickx. On the occasion of the gala evening in the Boby Centre we will be revealing five selected exclusive concert programmes for June 2018!” promises festival director David Dittrich.

During the Concentus Moraviae festival, which will be taking place between 1 and 27 June 2018, listeners will be exposed to an abundance of all kinds of musical nonsenses, jokes and baroque pranks, from the Musical Joke by W. A. Mozart through to works “in the shape of a pear”. Music with a smile will be performed on the festival’s stages by Iva Bittová and Ensemble Opera Diversa, the duo of phenomenal musical clowns Igudesman and Joo, as well as the Collegium Marianum and Cracovia Danza with the ‘Bach-ish’ Ballet about Coffee, Soňa Červená with the pianist Karel Košárek and the Orchestr Berg and others. The composer in residence for the twenty-third year of the festival Concentus Moraviae is characteristically Miloš Štědroň, a composer and musicologist of broad tastes, for whom the theme of the festival is crucial to his life and works.

The creator of the programme for the twenty-third year of Concentus Moraviae, Jelle Dierickx, was inspired by the comment from the one of the greatest musical entertainers, pianists and conductors, Victor Borge, who said that “a smile if the shortest distance between two people”. With the popular seventh Humoresque by Antonín Dvořák as its central melody the festival will examine the fascinating connection between music and humour. Many music festivals focus on the “sublime”, but only a few on the “ridiculous”. “Linking music and humour has often been the work of musical clowns, but a lot more can be done than just replacing noes with red noses,” explains Jelle Dierickx and adds: “Famous comedians such as Charlie Chaplin or Louis de Funès knew this. Philosophers and writers such as Socrates, Diogenes, Cervantes, Montaigne, Nietzsche or Kundera all had their humour and in this helped to define Europe. According to Milan Kundera laughter is even a metaphor for Europa, containing the ability to doubt, to be critical. Music is able to supplement this in a gentle and refined way.” And Concentus Moraviae 2018 will seek out and show all of that.

Today, 7 December 2017 tickets will go on sale for the five selected concerts. All the information on the Gala Concert, the Concentus Moraviae 2018 festival and the sale of tickets for the first five published concerts, beginning 7 December, can be found here.

The last opera première of the National Theatre Brno this year was Hurvínek Sells the Bride, which was co-produced with the Spejbl and Hurvínek Theatre. The première continued the thematic focus associated with the Year of Czech Music and took place on 24 November in the large hall of the Reduta Theatre.  more

With Thursday's concert entitled Bruckneriana, the Brno Philharmonic under the direction of Principal Conductor Dennis Russell Davies launched the subscription series Philharmonia in the Theatre I. The orchestra performed works by Anton Bruckner and Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, a Polish-American conductor and composer who devoted his life's work to Bruckner. Performers wearing crimson sashes with the inscription "Playing forte!” appeared in front of the audience, joining the "Let's not let culture die” initiative, which draws attention to the underfunding of culture and opposes the government's plan to invest just 0.64% of the state budget into culture next year, moving further and further away from its promise to spend at least 1%.  more

The Brno Philharmonic Orchestra has been running the Orchestral Academy of the Brno Philharmonic (OAFB) project for nine seasons, enabling young talented musicians to gain orchestral experience in a professional ensemble. In this manner, the orchestra educates the next generation of musicians, both permanent and external. However, working here also gives young people the opportunity to show their skills in chamber music and in a concert series called Young Blood aka Music Up Close. The first seasonal concert took place on Wednesday 15 November at Besední dom.  more

Baladas da Luta, Fighting Ballads, is the title of the sixth album by Brazilian singer Mariana Da Cruz and her Swiss-Brazilian band Da Cruz. It is a combination of modern music that combines Latin American tradition and contemporary electronic elements with strong lyrics. In them, the author fights for women’s rights, stands up against dictatorships and specifically criticizes the atmosphere that has evolved in Brazil under the now former authoritarian President Bolsonaro. Da Cruz performed at Brasil Fest Brno in August 2023. We revisit this festival with an interview conducted following their concert at Zelný trh. Singer Mariana Da Cruz and keyboard player and producer Ane Hebeisn, performing as Ane H, responded to our questions.  more

The programme for Janáček Brno 2024, an international opera and music festival now in its 9th year, was unveiled at a concert held to mark this occasion entitled Janáček to the start! On Saturday, 4 November, the Mahen Theatre was filled not only with devoted fans of the festival, but also with foreign journalists, politicians and prominent figures from the world of culture. In addition to a collection of wonderful musical performances, the audience was also treated to a lineup of renowned artists – Kateřina Kněžíková (soprano), Václava Krejčí Housková (mezzo-soprano), Josef Špaček (violin) and, last but not least, Robert Kružík, who took on the role of both conductor leading the Orchestra of the Janáček Opera at the National Theatre Brno during the evening and also performing as a cellist.  more