OSTRAVA DAYS NOTEBOOK 1

Coal Mine Michal

August 26

Gallery of Fine Arts

August 27

Clever clarinetist (and shameless flirt) Karel Dohnal.

The blistering temperatures matched the intensity of the music at Ostrava Days over the weekend, with two high-volume avant-garde events kicking off nine consecutive nights of contemporary music concerts in this gritty industrial city in northern Moravia.

On Friday night, trolleybus 104 swerved and lurched through a sweaty ride to Coal Mine Michal, an industrial heritage site on the city’s east side. Atop a towering tipple, crossed hammers in green neon overlook a massive mining and processing plant with haunting echoes of more prosperous times. In the huge changing room where the performances were held, miners’ clothes still hang by chains from the ceiling, like ragged ghosts.

The spooky factory ambience was perfect for abstract, otherworldly pieces like Cecilia Lopez’s Musica Mecanica para Chapas, in which standard horn instruments and various electronics interact with a chapa, a large, suspended sheet of metal hooked up to amplifiers. What sounds like a random series of noises is actually carefully scored, with the musicians all following timers and achieving some surprisingly sophisticated sounds.

Stockhausen’s Harlequin is more like a musical stand-up routine than a formal piece, with a solo clarinetist in costume squeezing every last laugh and improvisational riff out of a basic 12-bar hook. Karel Dohnal is a superb player, and was not shy about jumping at the sight of his own shadow or shamelessly flirting with women in the audience – for too long, perhaps, nearly 45 minutes in a hot, crowded room. After that, a heavy but brief bass distortion set by John Eckhardt, with accompanying ambient horn accents, came as a relief.

There were two musical standouts. Vocalist Salome Kammer gave a brilliant reading of Kurt Schwitters’ Ursonate, employing changing tones, tempos, sound effects and occasional snatches of melody to give life and personality to what is essentially a long string of nonsense syllables. And an ensemble from the Ostravská Banda orchestra served up an excellent improv, starting on stage and then expanding throughout the space – behind and to the sides of the audience, up on catwalks, in adjoining rooms – to create a vivid three-dimensional jam. Along with standard instruments like a trumpet and cello, in-situ objects like corrugated metal doors were used to create sharp percussive effects, while other players wandered around twanging a Jew’s harp or pushing a screechy metal chair across the floor.

The piece ended with what sounded like screams from an adjacent shower room, where earlier in the evening, performance artist Daniël Pflogger stood naked, back to the audience, with a menacing-looking device hooked to his genitals. Periodic blasts of electronic noise and medical charts on the walls were meant to simulate actual clinical research of male sexuality: “I reproduce the contraction pattern of the subject’s sphincter muscle that was registered during masturbation and orgasm,” Pflogger explained in the program book. But what it looked like was someone being tortured, with the wires and Pflogger’s outstretched arms calling to mind images from Abu Ghraib. The shower room setting added even creepier undercurrents. While not typical of Ostrava Days, Pflogger’s Electrodes put quite a jolt in the opening evening.

Saturday was all about jolts of electricity, with a 10-hour electronic music marathon starting in bright light and steamy afternoon heat at the city’s Gallery of Fine Arts. The audience moved between two small rooms for alternating performances, dashing out in between sets for fresh air and liquid relief in an adjoining beer garden.

For those of us who are not practitioners, electronic music all sounds the same after a while – a limited vocabulary of noises and effects, rearranged in order and volume. It even looks the same, mostly male soloists or duos hunched over tangles of electronic boards and wires, intently twisting knobs and dials, never looking at the audience. The first real break from that came courtesy of Tomáš Vtípil, who turned in a set that sounded like a madman had been turned loose in an orchestra pit and was sampling every instrument to see what insane sound he could pull out of it, with occasional screams of rage or exultation. Inventive fare, but the volume drove this critic to the beer garden, where it was much more pleasant listening to the noise through the open windows, with a cold Ostravar in hand.

Still, there were interesting moments. Gordon Monahan did an engaging mixed-media theremin piece that, he explained, originated when he couldn’t stop a radio broadcast from interfering with an electronic performance in Toronto. Petr Kotík introduced a recording of a new version of his sound collage PIUP, which was a treat to hear. And the duo No Sugar turned in an explosively inventive set, with multi-instrumentalist Liz Albee getting some amazing electronic noises out of an ordinary trumpet.

For this critic, the highlight of the day was the pairing of Andrea Neumann and Ivan Palacký. Along with electronics and metal percussion, Neumann plays an “inside piano” – a piece of the string board, literally from inside a piano. Palacký sits at a table loaded with gadgets, tapping, scratching and twirling his way through them like a kid in an electronic toy shop. Unlike much of the music on Saturday, theirs was quiet and nuanced, an accumulation of many small sounds and a mesmerizing exploration of the spaces between sounds.

The museum setting added its own dynamics in the form of a “Motor Art” exhibition. While industrial sounds were roaring and clanging away in the performance spaces, visitors could wander an adjacent room where several vintage Jawa motorcycles were on display, along with some true beauties: a 1902 Laurin & Clement belt-driven BZ motorcycle; a powder-blue 1961 Jawa two-seat Skůtr; and a cherry-red Aero 500 roadster in such bright mint condition that it almost hurt your eyes to look at it.

Geeky? Definitely. And a perfect match for a suds-soaked day of geeky electronics.

For a look at the Motor Art exhibition: http://www.gvuo.cz/images/vystavy/galerie/2011/motor/index.htm

For a tour of Coal Mine Michal: http://www.dul-michal.cz/en/

PREVIEW: MLADÁ PRAHA

Various venues

August 29 – September 15

Anna Hashimoto embodies the look and spirit of the festival.

Thereʼs always been a tendency to overlook Mladá Praha (Young Prague), the annual showcase of promising young classical talent. Which is a bit of a mystery to this critic. The organizers do a great job of culling competition winners and recommended students from around the globe, bringing them to Prague and giving them a chance to perform in sensational settings. Most of the concerts are free, and the music is good. Itʼs a nice way to ease into the new season, and get a sneak preview of the stars of tomorrow.

This is no idle boast. For the festivalʼs 20^th anniversary this year, the organizers have invited back alumni to play with another sterling set of young performers. The alumni roster includes two of the Czech Republicʼs finest cello players, Jiří Bárta (ʼ92) and Tomáš Jamník (ʼ01 and ʼ06). Also returning are Italian pianist Giuseppe Andaloro (ʼ04), who went on to win the prestigious Bolzano Ferruccio Busoni Competition; Canadian tenor Mark Murphy (ʼ04), now a soloist at an opera house in Gelsenkirchen, Germany; and Japanese violinist Ryosuke Suho, who won a major competition in Moscow just one month after appearing at last yearʼs festival.

If the names of some of the new players this year are unfamiliar, they will not be for long. Serbian pianist Tijana Andrejic, 25, has already performed on every major stage in her country. French horn player Jocelyn Willem, 25, is a 2007 Prague Spring laureate. Japanese cellist Dai Miyata, also 25, won the grand prix at the Rostropovich Cello Competition in Paris in 2009. Anna Hashimoto, 22, has won major clarinet competitions in Belgium and Italy and regularly sells out concerts in her homeland. And who knows what awaits 21-year old Hungarian flute player Zsuzsuanna Tóth and 14-year old Dutch violinist Boglárka Erdös?

One of the reasons the festival has been able to attract such a wealth of talent is because it has one foot firmly planted in Japan. Professor Yoshifumi Nakajima, a composer and choral conductor, has been with Mladá Praha since it began, bringing the pick of young Japanese talent to Prague along with some very good choirs. And the Japanese Embassy has been proactive about securing the support of major sponsors like Lexus, Panasonic and Chiyoda Technol.

“The ambassador himself gets on the phone and tells the companies, ʻYou have to help these young people,ʼ” says Norbert Heller, a pianist and member of the Mladá Praha organizing committee. “Itʼs most unusual.”

Mladá Praha has also benefited from the support of prominent Czech musicians. Violinist Lubomír Kostecký, a member of the famed Smetana Quartet, was a key early supporter of the festival. World-renowned violinist Josef Suk lent his name to Mladá Praha as its honorary president until his death earlier this year.

Serbian star Andrejic.

So the festivalʼs 20^th anniversary marks a significant milestone, with a program to match. There are two concerts at the Rudolfinum this year, both of which would be a solid addition to any regular-season schedule. On Sept. 3, Andrejic and Andaloro are teaming up for Bachʼs Double concerto for two pianos and strings in C minor, Willem will play a Mozart concerto and Miyata is taking on Dvořákʼs seminal Concerto for cello and orchestra in B minor. On Sept. 15, young Israeli conductor Bar Avni will lead the Hradec Kralové Philharmonic, with Hashimoto soloing on a Spohr concerto and Bárta taking center stage for Tchaikovskyʼs Variations on a Rococo Theme.

Still, the centerpiece of the festival is likely to be a performance of Mozartʼs Requiem at the breathtaking Basilica of the Assumption of Our Lady at Strahov Monastery. The venue alone is worth a visit. Professor Nakajima will be conducting a large group of Japanese singers, combined with Pragueʼs Kühn Choir, and the Pavel Haas Chamber Orchestra. As this concert is dedicated to the memory of the earthquake disaster victims in Japan, the age limit for performers (25 and under) has been stretched a bit to accommodate four adult vocal soloists, two Japanese and two Czech.

There are also some tasty concerts scheduled for Břevnov Monastery, Wallenstein Palace and the open-air Ledebur Garden below Prague Castle. An additional seven performances will be given on the road, in cities like Teplice and Litomyšl.

“Five years ago, a lot of these performers were just kids,” Heller says. Actually, a lot of them still look like kids. But as this critic has learned in the past, they play with a skill and sensitivity well beyond their years.

For a complete Mladá Praha schedule: http://www.mladapraha.cz/program2011.php?lang=en