Czech music festival reaches over 100 towns in Europe
Leos Janacek's "Moravian Folk Poetry In Songs" performed by Iva Bittova and the Skampa Quartet opened the Prague part of an international music project called "Czech Dreams" - a festival which is a chain of more than a hundred concerts performed in many small towns around Europe. The concerts are to promote Czech culture and music abroad but at the same time they aim to deepen links between different places in Europe.
"During the nine years we've been organising the 'Concentus Moraviae Festival' we've found out that it is very important to bring high-quality music not only to big cities but to smaller towns as well. Because this idea was very successful, we decided to carry it out in other European countries too. We were very pleased by the response. Czech music is quite well known in big cities where the stars of Czech classical music often perform. They are usually asked to play the well known repertoire. But we tried to include in the program, not only well known compositions and musicians, but also those that are less known."
This special character of "Czech Dreams" festival is also confirmed by its artistic director Ales Brezina.
One of the main goals of putting these less known compositions and composers on the program is to play down the national character of Czech music and present it in a rather multicultural context.
"We searched for some composers of German origin who spent their lives in our region. We have looked for the composers of Jewish origin who lived in Czech countries or who were born here. So we tried to broaden our approach to Czech music."
"I had a concert two weeks ago in Belgium in a city called Izegem, and in August I played in the famous Schleswig-Holstein Festival. These two concerts were really very nice. Very nice audience came. I must say I enjoyed it very much. I had to learn some new pieces for my repertoire - one of them was the sonata by Ravin Schulhof who is not very much played. But he composed two violin sonatas, so I chose one of them, and I am very happy I learned a piece, and I was very happy to be a part of 'Czech Dreams'."
Christian De Forche from the Belgian town of Izegem, where Pavel Sporcl played one of his concerts, is delighted that his home town has been able to take part in the "Czech Dreams" project.
"For many years we've had a town twining with the city of Zlin in South Moravia. So it was the municipality of Zlin that proposed us to participate in the project called 'Czech dreams'. By coincidence we had been thinking of organizing Czech week in Izegem, so we decided to put two things together and to incorporate a concert within the framework of 'Czech Dreams' in our Czech week. We had the concert with Pavel Sporcl and Petr Jirikovsky, we also had an exhibition of modern Czech graphic art and an exhibition of children's drawings, partly from Zlin - our twin town - and partly from Izegem."
And there are many other towns around Europe which have joined the project. Even though big cities and capitals were intentionally left out, dozens of smaller towns and cities are proud to be part of it. Cities like Salzburg, Naarden, Aix-en-Provence and Bristol have already taken part, and Krakow, Utrecht, Bonn and many others are still waiting to join the festival in the coming months. And even though the project was initially planned as a one-off event, due to its great popularity the organizers have already started considering a repeat festival in 2007.
