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| Who | Orchestr Berg (CZ) Philip Glass (USA) composer |
| Where | Chateau Mikulov |
| Program | LIFE: A Journey Through Time is an original multimedia symphony celebrating the splendour of life on Earth through the visions and images of photographer Frans Lanting and the music of Philip Glass. The symphony overarches the history of life on our planet in seven parts – from its earliest beginnings to its current diversity. It is an innovative work that combines the visual and performing arts with the natural and earth sciences. “Lanting’s majestic photographs move lightly across a giant screen above the orchestra while some of Philip Glass’s most haunting music plays below,” The Washington Post reports. “It’s a celebration of nature in all its glory.” Since its premiere, the LIFE Symphony has been performed in leading concert halls across North America and Europe, including at Lincoln Center in New York City for the opening of the World Science Festival, the Barbican Centre in London, and the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam for the 50th anniversary of the World Wildlife Fund. Beatrix of the Netherlands attended the event. The work was also the main musical programme at the official opening ceremony of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Geneva and was performed outdoors to an audience of 10,000 people during the Grant Park Music Festival in Chicago’s Millennium Park. The original version of LIFE Symphony was created for the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music (Santa Cruz, USA) in collaboration with National Geographic photographer Frans Lanting, his partner Christine Eckstrom, choreographer Alexander V. Nichols and conducted by Marin Alsop. The festival asked Philip Glass to select seven movements from his earlier works, originally composed for smaller ensembles or solo instruments, which Michael Riesman arranged for full symphony orchestra. Later, LIFE Symphony was reworked for a smaller orchestra to allow for wider performance possibilities. The first chamber performance took place during the Festival della Scienze organised by National Geographic at the Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome. “LIFE is a multimedia presentation that is a treat for the eyes and ears.” – National Public Radio “A technologically sophisticated spectacle… Lanting’s images literally danced to the beat of the music, dissolving and intermingling on the huge projection screen as the audience shouted “bravo” before Marin Alsop even raised her baton.” – San Jose Mercury News Dress code: Semi-Formal |
Peter Vrábel is Slovak conductor who lives and works in Prague. In 1995, he founded Orchestr BERG and set its musical direction – thanks to him, the orchestra is now appreciated as a unique interpreter of 20th century and contemporary music. It collaborates with contemporary Czech composers and creates an inspiring creative space for outstanding artists of the younger generation. He is a recipient of the Gideon Klein Prize and for his work with the mentioned orchestra he received the 2010 Czech Music Council / UNESCO Award with an honour for the credits of quality and for the general promotion of Czech music.
Orchestr BERG is a top Czech ensemble that has been bringing fresh wind to the Czech music scene for many years. It presents innovative and attractive projects combining contemporary music with dance, film, theatre, projections, etc. It is a pioneer in presenting contemporary music outside traditional halls. Since 2005 it has performed in a number of industrial buildings and in an under-construction Prague metro station. One of the most important activities of the orchestra is the support of Czech composers, especially of the younger generation. During its existence, the orchestra has commissioned and premiered more than two hundred new works. It also presents Czech premieres of works by the most important foreign composers, including Heiner Goebbels’ Schwarz auf Weiss, a musical theatre piece, Michel van der Aa’s musical film piece Up-close, Georg Friedrich Haas’ unique full-length composition In vain, and György Ligeti’s legendary work Poème symphonique for 100 metronomes. Orchestr BERG has performed a number of its own original projects, for example in collaboration with the 420PEOPLE dancers, director Petra Tejnorová, choreographer Mírka Eliášová and the SKUTR director duo. Furthermore, the ensemble has collaborated with the most important Czech cultural organisations, including the DOX Centre for Contemporary Art, Archa Theatre, National Theatre, Strings of Autumn festival, Prague Spring, Hradec Králové Music Forum etc. It is also involved in educational activities for all age groups of society. For the project Music for Sirens BERG won the prestigious Prix Italia 2021.
The American composer Philip Glass is one of the most important and influential artists of his time with his operas, symphonies, chamber works and a wide range of collaborations.
Born in Baltimore in 1937, he was educated at the University of Chicago, Juilliard and was a pupil of Darius Milhaud. He then moved to Europe, where he furthered his education under Nadia Boulanger and worked closely with the sitarist Ravi Shankar. In 1967 he returned to New York and founded the Philip Glass Ensemble, a septet playing amplified electric keyboards and various wind instruments.
Glass describes himself as a composer of “music with repetitive structures” and much of his early work was based on the repetition of short melodic fragments that were interwoven into a varied sound picture.
The number of his compositions is considerable: he wrote more than thirty operas (most renowned are probably Einstein on the Beach, Satyagraha or The Voyage) which have been performed on world stages, fourteen symphonies, thirteen concertos, nine string quartets and a large number of works for piano, organ and other ensembles. He also wrote a large amount of music for the theatre and film (The Hours, Kundun, The Truman Show). During his lifetime, he has collaborated with a number of important people, not only in the field of classical music (Yo-Yo Ma), but also in the field of popular music (David Bowie, Paul Simon, Linda Ronstadt) and writers such as Doris Leesing and Allen Ginsberg.
