Vězeňské zvony

World premiere of a composition written specifically for the Špilberk carillon.

For the closing concert of OKRAJIN, Prison Bells, the BCO commissioned Eliška Cílková to compose Archeon for the Špilberk Castle carillon and orchestra. A world premiere, written for this evening and for the Great Courtyard. Not an adaptation from the repertoire, but music created for this instrument in this very place. The carillon and orchestra will perform as a single dramaturgical whole under the open sky. The conclusion of the OKRAJINY cycle at Špilberk. The program surrounding the premiere does not seem lighthearted, but is held together by a powerful theme. Memory, survival, censorship, revolution.

Špilberk was once the harshest prison far and wide. Today we know it differently, as a castle with a park and courtyard where we go to concerts. Mayor Christian d’Elvert contributed significantly to the form we know from the hill today. It was on June 16, 1861, the day after his election, that he proposed the establishment of a public park at Špilberk. 165 years later, on the same calendar day, the Great Courtyard will host an evening that connects the memory of the prison, the world premiere of a composition for carillon, and the conclusion of the entire OKRAJIN cycle.

If you want to be there for the first performance of a composition for the Brno carillon and, at the same time, for a concert that makes sense at Špilberk both historically and in terms of the date, this is the day.

The concert is being organized in cooperation with the Brno City Museum.

Program:

• Iannis Xenakis – A l’île de Gorée
• Eliška Cílková – Archeon for glockenspiel and BCO
• Dmitri Kourliandski – Innermost Man
• Alfred Schnittke – The End of St. Petersburg – suite
• Harpsichord – Daria Savvateeva
• Soprano – Irena Troupová
• Brno Contemporary Orchestra, conducted by Pavel Šnajdr

“The concert is presented by the Brno Contemporary Orchestra – BCO as part of a season titled OKRAJINY, in which we collectively move into a space or landscape between the real and the unreal, between reality and fiction, between religion and mythology…”

“We have created fictional myths and legends about our ancestors and events that, like Deleuzian rhizomes, form unexpected assemblages of places, spacetime, deconstructed customs, and resonant structures.”