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Czech Television presents
Echo of the Prague Spring Festival 2011
Part 6.
Dear friends, the famous San Francisco Symphony played at this year's Prague Spring Festival
in the year of its 100th anniversary.
How will you celebrate this anniversary?
We will, of course, celebrate with the music which brought us fame.
We are also preparing next year's American Mavericks festival,
connected with unique radio and internet series.
We will focus on premieres of authors who have written for us
as for example Henry Cowell, whom we play in Prague,
or John Adams, whom we comissioned to write a new piece.
The audience loves us thanks to innovations,
new ideas and surprises brought to classical music
and that is why we want to include all of this in our anniversary season.
Michael Tilson Thomas has been the music director of the San Francisco Symphony since 1995,
known as an outstanding interpreter of contemporary music.
During your career, have you noticed any shift in the attitude of the audience or the musicians towards contemporary music?
Yes, I think significant changes have been happening.
Take for instance the pieces we played at the first concert here,
some of them were written almost 100 years ago but are still a challenge for some audiences.
Nevertheless, audiences have embraced them with enthusiasm.
And this is what life teaches us - to find and to get to know new interesting things.
I play Berg's Concerto for Violin very often, I think I should have played it by now around 180 times.
It is one of the most satisfying and inner pieces on my repertoire
I would compare its position in violin music to Mahler in the symphonic music.
On the one hand, the Concerto is very strong and deep,
on the other it is naive and emotional, the audience embraces it always with enthusiasm.
It is a purely personal work which captures happy and tender moments
as well as moments of approaching catastrophe,
but in the end, it incites piece and beauty.
Amadinda Percussion Group played in the new Prague Conservatoire Concert Hall.
The group was created in 1984 in Budapest.
On what kind of repertoire does your group focus and what did you choose for the Prague audience?
The main activity we focus on from the very beginning
is the contemporary music for percussions of the 20th and 21th century.
We are very proud that outstanding authors have written for us and dedicated us their pieces
like John Cage, György Ligeti and Steve Reich.
We will play Ligeti's piece from 2000 today,
dedicated to Katalin Károlyi, our singer whom you will hear tonight.
About Ligeti I can only say that his music was for me the greatest musical event in my life.
We were in contact at the end of his life and we managed to discuss many things.
For me, he is one of the greatest musicians of the 20th century
and one of its outstanding personalities.
So I am very happy we could meet intensively and work together and that we understood each other very well.
The singer has remarkable possibilities in this piece, he can do anything that crosses his mind.
From Bel canto to folk singing, from shouting to crying,
anything the human voice is able to produce.
And it is not difficult, it is natural.
On Friday, we met the director of the San Francisco Symphony again,
who is considered to be one of the most competent interpreters of Mahler's music.
What role does Mahler's music play in your life?
I heard this music for the first time when I was 13 years old,
and it was a shock for me, because this music expressed the feelings of my life.
Since then, I have been studying the rest of Mahler's music.
It is an important part of my life, I would not be me without Mahler's music.
I have learnt a lot from it and I am especially happy to play it here at the Prague Spring,
since in each Mahler's work there are musical motives and strains of Czech music,
beautiful and expressive sound, full of happiness on the one hand and full of sadness on the other.
And all this has its origins in places where we are playing at the moment
and that makes me happy.
One of the soloists in Mahler's Resurrection was mezzo-soprano Katarina Karneus.
How often do you sing Mahler and do you enjoy it?
As a mezzo-soprano I sing Mahler a lot, it suits my voice well.
I sing parts in his 2nd, 3rd and 8th Symphonies and his beautiful song cycles.
Mahler is very close to my heart, he is unique and I love to interpret his works very much.
The first time I sang Mahler was with Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony.
Mahler is probably the most spiritual author of those I have sung until now.
It is so amazing to hear his fantastic choirs,
to realize how masterly he was able to build them up.
Be it in his 2nd or in his 8th Symphony.
To sing Mahler has always been an immense pleasure for me, and especially with Michael Tilson Thomas,
whose experience in this field, founded by his intensive study of Mahler's life,
are extraordinarily beneficial for all participants.
He feels and lives the music with his whole being.
Of course we look forward to coming to Prague again!
Although no one knows what will happen and you sometimes have to plan years in advance in the music business.
But believe me, the sooner we can get back to Prague, the better!
Hopefully we will meet Michael Tilson Thomas soon.
Until then, we will meet in our next Echo on Wednesday, May 25th.
Good bye.