While the biannual Ostrava Days in the Czech Republic features, primarily, a wide array of post-1950 solo and small ensemble pieces, it is, at its heart, a symphonic endeavor--founded and curated by Czech composer/conductor Petr Kotik. Over the course of nine expansive nights in August, running this year from the 21st to the 29th, the festival hosted three different orchestras, and all three together on the first night. The Ostrava-based Janáček Philharmonic Orchestra and resident ensemble Ostravská Banda did plenty of heavy lifting over the course of the fest, with the Miners Band from Stonava (a brass group from that nearby town in coal-mining Moravia) joining them on opening night.
Lest thoughts set in of atonality run amok among the "agony of modern music" (à la Henry Pleasants) on unarable Czech land, let it be noted that this year's programming included the following: a piece by Salvatore Sciarrino steeped in Mendelssohn, a Helmut Oehring composition which borrowed from Beethoven, an Alvin Lucier work informed by Stravinsky, Richard Ayres' partial elegy for Alfred Schnittke, student composer Ian Mikyska's take on Schubert's settings of Goethe, nods to Schoenberg care of Berg and Alex Mincek, as well as vocalist David Moss' interpretive reading of Wittgenstein and hat tips to two masters of horror in Bernhard Lang's dedication to Boris Karloff and Oerhring's own reworking of Edgar Allan Poe.
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