Press - Article from Hudební rozhledy /Music Opinions Magazine/

The International Guitar Festival and Courses Brno ‘03

(Aug.10th – 16th, 2003)

What can be said about the 12th International Guitar Festival Brno 2003? The theme of this year’s festival, “Styles linked with improvisation”, created room for an artistically rich programme of festival concerts, encompassing flamenco, romantic, renaissance and baroque music on period instruments, jazz and a combination of Cuban music with classical and jazz. This concept drew around 3500 listeners to the festival recitals and no one who took part regretted it. The festival entailed perfect organisation, colourful artistic direction and understandably the most crucial thing – the best soloists and teachers.

The gala opening, inaugurated by the mayor of the city of Brno, Petr Duchon, together with artistic director of the festival, Vladislav Blaha, was held in the presence of 1300 concert-goers on Sunday the 10th of August, in the great courtyard of the Brno castle Spilberg. After the introduction, the concert, titled “Night of Flamenco”, got underway. The leading role of the evening was played by the group of Rafael Cortes. Cortes belongs amongst the best guitarists of flamenco, performing since the age of 6, having been considered as somewhat of a child prodigy. This charismatic thirty year old, born to a Spanish gypsy family, managed, together with his band (guitars, dance, singing, cajon drum, bass guitar) to fire the imagination of the public and collect his well deserved ovations. It is said about Rafael that there is nothing in the world of Flamenco that he could not play, and he fully persuaded us of that. Somewhat of a warm-up act was the flamenco group Viva Flamenco! of Polish roots, whose pivotal role is played by Miguel Czachowski, a student of Cortes. Despite the technical proficiency of the music and dance, there was a lack of the earthiness and interpretational power of the Spanish Gypsies, which was so strongly in evidence in the performance of Rafael Cortes and his group, who confirmed the impossibility of any duplication of this Spanish gypsy folk style from the regions of Andalusia by other nationalities or foreign players.

The next evening in the great assembly chamber of the New Town Hall saw the recital of guitarist Pavel Steidl, a Czech living in the Netherlands. Steidl initially played compositions by Johann Caspar Mertz, Nicoly Paganini and Luigi Legnani on a copy of a romantic period guitar. Precise technique, lightness and insight, but above all a refined musical sense, these are the properties that have put Steidl in amongst the leading concert performers. In his hands even the most trivial Paganini miniatures sounded delightful and, owing to his thespian expression, which Steidl accompanies his playing with, some even humorous. In the second half of the evening Steidl played a more contemporary guitar with pieces by Johan Antonin Losy, Maria Castenu-Tedesca, Jana Obrovska and his own composition And you too go to Ithaka.

Connoisseurs of lute music came to enjoy a concert by one of the best lutenists of today, Englishman Nigel North. Guided by North’s fingers, music by John Dowland, William Byrd, Henry Purcell, Nicolas Vallet, Thomas Robinson, Francis Cutting and Alessandro Piccinini brought a renaissance mood to the New Town Hall. Undeniably interesting was the difference in interpretation between the renaissance repertoire played on a renaissance lute in the first half of the concert, and the baroque pieces played on the more than 2 meter long Theorbus in the second half of the concert. The listeners accredited North’s achievement – as was the case in most of the other concerts – with a standing ovation.

Martin Myslivecek, guitarist and teacher at Gratz University in Austria, played, together with singers of the chamber choir Musica de Camera under the direction of Martin Franz, a contemporary programme of pieces by Maria Castelnuova- Tedesca, two pieces by Petr Eben and the choral piece Nunc est Bibendum by Antonin Tucapski.

Venezuelan Gabriel Guillen is without doubt a brilliant guitarist, having performed in the Brno guitar festival for the third time. His brilliance showed in his performance of pieces by composers of Spanish and Latin – American provenance: Manuel Marii Ponce, Federico Moreno- Torroba, Isaac Albeniz, Antonio Laura and Manuel de Fall, who above all fit with his nature.

Likewise, Massimo Felici definitely did not disappoint. Felici played lyrical compositions from Vincento Asencia, Astor Piazzolla, Toru Takemitsu, Mauro Giulliani and Alexandro Tansman. Felici has natural charisma and remarkable concentration even in stuffy summer temperatures (due to recording, the windows in the hall could not be open).

After Felici’s concert came a night-time jam session with the 84 year old guitarist and composer John W. Duarte in the Livingstone club with a local jazz trio (Jan Beranek – violin, Milan Kasuba – guitar, Oldrich Svoboda – Double Bass). Played were jazz standards by famous composers – George Gerschwin, Cole Porter, Richard Rogers and others. Owing to the fact that it was to be a true jam session, John Duarte refused any rehearsal beforehand, so the performance onstage really was the first time the group of musicians had played together. After having to solve a slight technical hitch with the sound system in the first part of the session – all conducted in the heat and unbreathable air of the club – Duarte and the Brno musicians had the rest of the evening for enjoyable improvisation.

An hour before the beginning of the closing concert of the Husband and Wife duo of Vania del Monaco (English of Sicilian origin, living in Spain) and Alfredo Panebianco (from Cuba), the bridge on one of their guitars snapped off. Master guitar maker Jan Schneider readily lent the guitarist one of his own instruments. Even after this discomfort the duo performed wonderfully. Their repertoire is rooted in classical music, which they enrich with principles of Cuban music and Latin – American jazz. The majority of the pieces on the programme came from Alfred Panebianco himself. The concert was a welcome and refreshing addition to the festival, and a fun end to the series of evening concerts.

A significant part of the Brno festival are the performing courses, in which participants receive individual tuition in masterclasses with leading teachers. They took place in the Astorka hotel, belonging to the Janacek Academy of Performing Arts. Students from 15 countries had, during the week, the opportunity to take part in, or observe, masterclasses with Milan Tesar, Zdenek Dvorak, Leo Witoszynsky, John W. Duarte, Vladislav Blaha and some of the soloists from the concert evenings. Gabriel Guillen was sought after as the authority on Latin – American music, while the emphasis was on Italian music in Massimo Felici’s classes. Thoroughly engaging were the classes and afternoon lecture by Nigel North.

The large festival guitar ensemble directed by Alois Mensik performed well rehearsed (despite only four rehearsals) renditions of Moravienne by John Duarte, three Czech songs arranged by A. Mensik, Recuerda by O. Munoz and Vivaldi concerto (the solo being played on the soprano guitar by Dusi Burmec). We cannot help but admire the result, which was heard at the Friday afternoon concert. It is not that often that one hears the well coordinated ensemble of 25 guitars playing together. Apart from Friday’s afternoon concert, in which a number of course participants played in addition to the ensemble, participants also had the chance to play at two other afternoon concerts, although the main attractions of the series of afternoon recitals were the performances by various competition winners: the Slovakian duo Adam Marek and Peter Tomko (winners of a competition in Dolni Kubin), Nad’a Kosinskaja (winner of the J. Duarte prize from a competition in the Rust Festival) and Jan Cizmar and string quartet Euforia (winners of the 3rd prize in the international competition for guitar and string quartet in Schweinfurt, Germany).

A closing party was held after the Friday evening concert of Vania del Monaco and Alfredo Panebianco in the theatre restaurant Bohema. Guitar playing, singing and dancing continued till the morning, the last people only leaving for Netherlands based guitar maker Jeroen Hilhorst’s lecture on the theme of Understanding the guitar’s tone. After the lecture was the closing concert by Jan Cizmar and the Euforia Quartet, during which they played quintets from John Duarte and Leo Brouwer.

The standard of the festival concerts was very high. At the same time, the festival maintained its similarly high level of pedagogic and organisational finesse, which is remarkable given the limited financial resources. The festival and courses were organised by the Czech Classical Guitar Society, the Brno Cultural and Information Centre and Czech Music Society. Under the artistic direction of guitarist and professor of the Brno Conservatoire, Vladislav Blaha, the event became a cultural celebration.

The friendly atmosphere of the whole festival, in which competitiveness and egocentrism in conjunction with the ambitious individualism of some musicians had no place, served to add to the appeal of the festival. This year was without doubt another step in the qualitative and artistic growth of the Brno International Guitar Festival. The 13th annual festival will run between the 15th – 21st August 2004.

Hana Havlisova and Jan Cizmar
/students of the music faculty of Masaryk University Brno, absolvents of guitar from Brno Conservatoire/
Jan Cizmar is main editor of “Kytara” - Czech classical guitar magazine.

Translation: Jason Musil

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