45th Brno International Music Festival
Moravian Autumn

1.–14.10.2010

Theme: de_cadence

Festival presents Statutory City of Brno
under the auspices
of Roman Onderka
Mayor of the Statutory City of Brno.

With financial support
of the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic,
the South Moravian Region
and Leoš Janáček Foundation.

As Charles Baudelaire wrote in 1857, a strange music sounds from the belly of the carrion. But what music resounds from our world? There is a constant clash between music that has become part of society and forms its image, and music that seeks new paths,  challenges deep-seated concepts and offers new points of departure. On the one side decadence and nausea from prevailing stereotypes, tabloidization, vulgarity, narcissism, morbidity and mysticism; on the other, discovery of new worlds, trends and often unexpected connections.

Our programme for the 45th season of the Moravian Autumn International Music Festival tries to locate the analogies, connections, phenomena and trends which occupy the spaces between condemnation of the old and acceptance of the new, between renouncement of the conventional and establishment of the unconventional. We interrogate notions of acceptability, tolerance, indepen-dence and commercialism. We pose questions, though admittedly often leave the business of answering them to the audience.

But what is it that we seek? Is it the diseased soul, the Gates of Hell, the cruel Salome, or the heightened mannerisms so characteristic of the late phases of various eras? Is it true decadent values, breakings of taboos and social conventions, or, on the contrary, the establishment of something new? Is it not in this constant clash, in this strangeness that we find important values of progress, purification and transformation of art? How far, and how near, is late Schumann to early Mahler, and how will our conception of the end of romanticism be enhanced by listening to Grieg’s only symphony at the first concert? How does waltz and the grotesque dance of skeletons relate to ideas about the end of our physical world, performed here by superb pianists? What drives tragedy in Schubert and Fauré? What convergence is there between Haydn, Haas, Milhaud and Eder? How do three distinct faces of German music – Brahm’s rationality, Schoen-berg’s expressiveness, and Rihm’s philosophising – here performed by a great sextet, fit together? Are we open to other worlds? Will we understand Novák’s inspiration by an English legend, Dorman’s infatuation with non-European music, and Scriabin’s inner world? What parallels are there between classicism, romanticism and the music of the second half of the twentieth century, between Haydn and Schnittke, Smetana and Balakauskas? And how much do we actually know about Lithuanian music? Can inspiration by dance music, vernacular culture or a children’s story be thought of as decadent? Is it possible for a composer to be inspired by a white painting? Can we imagine the consummate opus of Honnegger about the tragic fate of Joan of Arc as a fascinating and riveting spectacle? Is not genius often linked with eccentricity, and is it not often quite strange indeed? 
   
Viktor Pantůček