A touch of home

For many of us, our sense of identity is associated with the feeling of home. Likewise, this hugely contributes to the works of this year’s composers and musicians, creating a programme that explores the personal and cultural dimensions tied to that feeling. Fittingly, this began in the home of our festival with New Zealand’s very own Victoria Kelly, this year’s Composer in Residence. From there, we travelled through Bohemia and Moravia, through the Czech Republic and onwards to the North American / Chinese pioneer, Tan-Dun. We then celebrated the centenary of György Ligeti, master of playfully constructing organised madness with music.

Our opening concert, Sono, explored the personal dimension of Samuel Barber and Edwin York Bowen’s composition, both of whom were criticised for their conservative and Neo-romantic musical language during a time where most composers were exploring atonality. In contrast, we had the vibrant and vivid explorations of György Ligeti (Hommàge), Alfred Schnittke (Immemorial) and Tan-Dun (Homeland). Each of these composers deconstructed and reassembled their own tonalities, resulting in endless musical influences inspiring their work.

A people united

Slipping into a new dimension, our journey explored the cultural formation of the Czech Republic. This difficult road spanned years of geopolitical challenges, but ultimately united people living in Bohemia, Moravia and Czech Silesia. Despite the uncertainty of this time, music played a powerful role in establishing and preserving Czech national identities. 

The key figures in this included Bedrich Smetana (Homeland), considered the father of Czech music, who became a national symbol through the ever-shifting borders of the 20th century. Antonin Dvorak (Hommàge, Muzikální, Homeland) and Bohuslav Martinu (Muzikální) were hugely influenced by Smetana, further defining and immortalising the Czech style and aesthetic. The famously individual thinker Leoš Janáček went in search of his own truth through a rigorous study of speech, collecting thousands of voice recordings and notating them into what he called nápěvky mluvy, tunelets of speech or speech melody. These ‘windows into the human soul’ hugely influenced his String Quartet No.2 “Intimate Letters”, a ‘manifesto on love’ inspired by a passionate correspondence of which more than 700 letters still survive. This extraordinary work featured in this year’s closing concert, Manifesto.

A new perspective

Our last thread explored travelling through different cultural centres, changing surroundings and changing dimensions of consciousness, and the way being far from home influences our perspective of ourselves. This year’s closing work was a celebration of just that, with Tchaikovsky’s tuneful nostalgia remembering a summer in Florence.