Press reviews
NODO on the World Map of Classical Music Festivals
28.4.2026
British music magazine Gramophone, the oldest and most widely read classical music publication in Europe, has included NODO / New Opera Days Ostrava in its annual world guide to classical music festivals. Out of more than a hundred festivals from around the world, only three Czech festivals are fea... View Article
Tempo: Ostrava Days 2025
29.1.2026
Ostrava Days is a biennial event held in the former Czech mining city of the same name. Founded in 2001 by the Czech-American composer and flautist Petr Kotík, the festival seeks to mingle certain strains of American experimental music with composers and performers from around Europe, but especially... View Article
All About Jazz: Ostrava Days 2025
7.1.2026
Close to the beginning of this moderne music festival in the old coal-mining capital of Czechia, its Minimarathon Of Electronic Music is an inevitable highlight of each edition. Lordy knows what a full-on marathon would be like, but this mini-version is substantial enough, spanning 2pm until 1am. Of... View Article
Czech Music Quarterly: Ostrava and the Search for New Music and New Spaces
2.12.2025
Ostrava Days is one of the most important platforms for the creation and performance of contemporary music, modeled after the summer courses in Darmstadt. It connects both composers and listeners with the most up-to-date music. The festival has operated in this manner for a quarter of a century and,... View Article
Seismograf: Microtones In the Coal Mines
3.10.2025
Ostrava Days brought together young composers and established figures in the former mining town of Czechia for a panorama of experiments and monumental soundscapes – ranging from Dadaist primal forces to near infinite silence. Kazuhisa Uchihashi stood among rusty combine harvesters at the Agricultu... View Article
Brooklyn Rail: Ostrava Days
2.10.2025
Ostrava is an old mining town in the northeast of Czechia, very close to the Polish border. Its looming structures squat just outside the city, coal seams untouched since 1994, the gargantuan architecture now existing with a smudged, rust-red beauty and holding renewed interest for weirdo tourists w... View Article
The Wire: New Opera Days Ostrava
19.8.2024
The notion of opera has undergone challenges for at least the last 50 years. At the 2024 New Opera Days Ostrava, though, there are bigger challenges to be made. Doomsday prophecies and the solace of cold eternity were in store. Kurt Gottschalk, The Wire | read the whole article below ↓ ... View Article
František Chaloupka: I Do Not Trust Composers Who Talk Too Much
17.1.2024
In the Czech Music Quarterly magazine, an interview with Czech composer František Chaloupka was published. In the text, American composer Anna Heflin speaks to him about spirituality, writing his own libretti, and, somewhat ironically, composers talking too much about composition and also about the ... View Article
Seismograf: The new music breathes in the old coal mining town
1.11.2023
The cover article of Seismograf magazine is currently a report from Ostrava Days. You can read it (in the original) at the link below, we present here only a short excerpt: "One of Europe's largest new music biennials has long since said goodbye to the old world. Ostrava Days in the Czech Republic ... View Article
All About Jazz: Ostrava Days 2023
16.10.2023
Ostrava Days happens once every two years, mostly dedicated to the well-being of new music, composed for varying sizes of ensembles, right up to a fully-bloated orchestra. Sometimes, though, works will be penned for mere solo performers. It has always had extended ears for jazz, improvisation and el... View Article
Glissando: About the many worlds of music. Ostrava Days Music of Today Festival 2023 (I)
16.10.2023
As I took the train to Ostrava on August 23, I wondered what awaited me at the festival and how to approach it - despite its 11 previous editions, I was about to attend for the first time. I expected a formula typical of large events centered around classical music and a relatively clear theme. Howe... View Article
Czech Music Quarterly: Ostrava Days 2023
13.10.2023
The new issue of the English-language magazine Czech Music Quarterly has just been published. In that issue, three texts return to Ostrava in August for the 12th biennial Ostrava Days festival. Every two years, we at Czech Music Quarterly are faced with a dilemma: we know we have what amounts to a... View Article
The Wire: Ostrava Music Days
5.10.2023
Ostrava is at the heart of a former industrial region linking the Czech Republic and Poland. Like Detroit and Liverpool, the urban population has been hollowed out and the city center is quiet. In ideology and approach, the Music Days, founded and run by the seemingly ageless Petr Kotik, compares wi... View Article
Opernglas: Playing Trump
3.10.2023
Only a small number of operas composed today will see another production soon after their world premiere. The Austrian composer Bernhard Lang has now achieved such a feat of art. His short opera "Playing Trump" was, after its performance by the State Opera in Hamburg in August 2021, performed a year... View Article
MusicPaper: The Darmstadt of Moravia
28.9.2023
Ostrava is a city with an industrial past, with a history associated with coal mining, iron processing, and heavy pollution. But after all the mines closed in 1989, the old industrial facilities were converted into cultural spaces, museums and theaters, and the efforts of the whole community were fo... View Article
ORF: Ostrava Days 2023 @ Zeit-Ton Magazin
26.9.2023
Ostrava Days 2023 on the airwaves of the Austrian station ORF. For German speakers, we bring you a recording of the report from the 12th biennial music of today festival. Listen to samples from the festival and interviews with the performers, prepared directly in Ostrava by Marie-Therese Rudolph. T... View Article
Bachtrack: Casting Trump as a 21st-century Brechtian villain
3.9.2023
One cannot reasonably hope that Julius Ceasar or Henry VIII or even Richard Nixon for that matter might be making headlines as a new production of an opera about them is being staged, but a one-off mounting of Bernhard Lang's Playing Trump at Ostrava Days (Staatsoper Hamburg gave the world premiere ... View Article
Bachtrack: Stories and echoes underscore the power of the orchestra on opening night of Ostrava Days
30.8.2023
"The biennial Ostrava Days festival generally only gets its wings after the first few days of programming. This year's edition included outdoor performances in public thoroughfares, a 12-hour marathon of experimental electronics and a concert of new compositions for an 85-year old, one-of-a-kind, re... View Article
Kurt Gottschalk: Art of Music & Ideas (review)
3.5.2023
Art of Music & Ideas Czech – American – Czech April 20, 2023 – Don Buchwald Theater, Leonard & Claire Tow Center for the Performing Arts, Brooklyn CollegeApril 21, 2023 – Bohemian National Hall, Czech Center NY In 1997, Petr Kotik organized the Festival of Music of Extended Duration in P... View Article
Glissando: Resonating Breath of Air. Impressions of Prometeo by Luigi Nono
3.2.2023
The Czech premiere of Prometeo – The Tragedy of the Hearing by the Italian avant-garde composer Luigi Nono was realized as part of the NODO / New Opera Days Ostrava festival on June 30, 2022. The report from that hot early evening in Triple Hall Karolina was brought, among other things, by the Polis... View Article
Czech Music Quarterly: Everything Without Borders and for the First Time. New Opera Days Ostrava 2022
28.11.2022
A conventional production in an opera house, a six-hour music marathon, a classical drama interwoven with contemporary music, a performance on a ski slope, or a giant concert in a former electric power plant. All this was included in the eight works presented during the course of six evenings (June ... View Article
