Responces of Ostrava Days 2011 Participants
Ostrava Days is a three-week long
institute, which culminates into a 7-day festival. It is a working
environment with a focus on compositions for orchestra. With two resident
orchestras - the 95-piece Janáček Philharmonic Orchestra and Ostravská banda -
as well as a score of chamber ensembles, conductors, soloists and 35-piece
choir Canticum Ostrava, it is one of the largest events of its kind in the
world. It is organized biennially and since its inception in 2001, it has made
a significant contribution to the music of today.
Ostrava Days Audience
Ostrava Days INSTITUTE is an international working environment. In 2011, for three weeks, a group of 28 resident students, composers,
performers, and musicologists worked with notable personalities in the field of
new and contemporary music.
The Institute, consisting of seminars, workshops, presentations, discussions
and individual meetings, is mainly (but not only) focused on works for
orchestra. The working language is English and virtually all communication
among participants is in English.
Ostrava Days is not a school where one teaches various disciplines. Our
assumption is that art cannot be taught, but that one nevertheless learns by
working in association with more-experienced colleagues.
Morton Feldman’s understanding of orchestration resulted from a discussion with
Edgard Varèse on the streets of New York.
John Cage maintained that he learned most while playing chess with Henry Cowell
and Marcel Duchamp.
Ostrava Days attempts to create a similarly open, "educational"
environment, where participants work together and are mutually influenced.
Ostrava Days FESTIVAL unfolds during the last week of the
Institute and this year included 19 concerts, eight of which with
Janáček Philharmonic Orchestra and Ostravská banda.
The programming of the festival is independent of mainstream festival programs
and has included major works by Christian Wolff, Petr Kotík, Martin Smolka,
Phill Niblock, Elliott Sharp, Bernhard Lang, Larry Polansky, Rolf Riehm,
Wolfgang Rihm, among others. Classics of new music are also often presented.
They include works by Morton Feldman, John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Iannis
Xenakis, György Ligeti, Edgard Varèse or Galina Ustwolskaja, among others.
The program of the festival also includes substantial number of works by
resident-students of the Ostrava Days Institute.
