8/9 An Hour Between a Dog and a Wolf
Jan Skácel (1922 – 1989): selection from the collection An Hour Between a Dog and a Wolf
Klement Slavický (1910 – 1999): Wind Trio (1937)
Miloslav Kabeláč (1908 – 1979): Wind Sextet (1940)
Václav Dobiáš (1909 – 1978): Nursery Rhymes for a Nonet (1938)
According to Germanic mythology, the time between 3 am and 4 am is a time when the night gradually turns into day, when the evil visions of the days to come penetrate deep sleep. In our case, on the other hand, it is a time when the day ends and the evening, darkness – the wind does not blow, birds do not sing and the air is yellowish, we do not know what to expect, and dogs turn into wolves.
The Hour Between the Dog and the Wolf, however, is notably the name of a significant collection of poems by poet Jan Skácel, whose death thirty years ago will be commemorated in November 2019. The collection, together with others titled Smutének (Sadness) and Metličky (Whisks), was written during the 1960’s and anticipated the silencing of Jan Skácel’s poetry in the period of subsequent Communist ‘normalization’. The Brno Contemporary Orchestra was inspired by the legacy of poet Jan Skácel and the musical programme is therefore devised “between a dog and a wolf”.
The programme of the evening includes compositions that adhere to the legacy of folk tradition, but their umbilical cord with maternal folklore is stretched by a rational composition approach. All three works were written at the turn of the 1930’s and 1940’s, they garnered extraordinary success and heralded or directly reflected the emerging horrors of World War II, which had a considerable impact on the then residents of Villa Tugendhat.
The works of all three composers were then silenced, although the reasons were different.
With regard to this year’s thirtieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and other revolutionary events across Central and Eastern Europe, we can hope that no more works will be silenced, and that the hour between a dog and a wolf will remain a mere mythology and not a real harbinger of subsequent disasters.
TICKET SALE:
Admission: 350 CZK / person
Capacity is limited, advance ticket purchase required.
Tickets can be purchased online from 17 May at www.tugendhat.eu.
Stiletto heels are not permitted in the interior. A tour of the villa interior is not part of the programme.
INFORMATION
Tel: +420 515 511 015 / 017
E-mail: info@tugendhat.eu
A poster can be downloaded here.