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July 7th, 2008
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April 9th, 2008 issue

Czech composer Kryštof Mařatka had a homecoming from hell last week.

Invited to write a piece for Prague Premieres, the contemporary music festival at the Rudolfinum, Mařatka was in the audience Friday night for the debut of his Zvěrohra (Beastyplay), a brilliant experimental work. Soprano Elena Vassilieva squawked, warbled, tittered and grunted her way through a musical representation of mankind’s earliest attempts at communication over an equally radical score. It was at once sophisticated and humorous, far and away one of the freshest and most inventive pieces in the festival.
The Czech Philharmonic, however, clearly did not share that opinion. At least one of the violinists put down his instrument and refused to play during the performance. At rehearsals during the week, sometimes up to half the orchestra refused to play, making jokes and animal noises while Vassilieva was trying to sing. After the concert, one of the musicians gave back two flutes Mařatka had loaned the orchestra and told him, “Take these, go far away and never come back.”
This for a composer with an impeccable pedigree. The bust of Antonín Dvořák that greets visitors when they first enter the Rudolfinum was done by Josef Mařatka, Kryštof’s grandfather. His father Zdeněk, a highly regarded Prague physician, used to take his young son there for concerts. After studies at the Prague Conservatory, Kryštof was given a scholarship to continue his studies in Paris, where he has lived since 1994. He’s been awarded commissions by orchestras and institutions around the world, including a symphonic work commissioned by the National Theater in Prague to mark the Czech Republic’s entry into the European Union in 2004.
None of which made any difference to the Czech Philharmonic players. One complained over beers after the concert that his instrument was broken — not, perhaps, an entirely specious gripe about a score that called for the musicians to occasionally bang on their instruments and stamp their feet. He went on to denounce Mařatka’s piece as “not music,” degrading and embarrassing, and the orchestra’s reaction as entirely appropriate. “When you ask people to act like 15-year-olds,” he said, referring to the vocals and foot-stomping, “that’s how they’ll behave.”
Mařatka, 36, reluctantly agreed to an interview the next day. He was remarkably restrained for a man who had taken abuse all week, refusing to repeat some of the names he and his music had been called during rehearsals. “Really nasty,” he said, shaking his head.
The orchestra’s reaction to his piece didn’t surprise him, and didn’t bother him. “The same thing was said about music by Beethoven, Janáček, Stravinsky, Varese,” he said. “Anytime you write something unconventional, you take the risk that people won’t like it.”
What bothered Mařatka was the immature behavior of some orchestra members. “They have a right to their opinion,” he said. “But they don’t have a right to be vulgar. And they don’t have a right to sit there and not play. They’re supposed to be professionals.
“Whether it’s music, or not music — fantastic, I’m glad they’re thinking about it. But they don’t have a right to boycott it. I just hope that the festival continues, and that this kind of pressure doesn’t hurt it.”
As it’s the pet project of Václav Riedlbauch, the director of the Czech Philharmonic and a composer himself, that seems unlikely. The truth is, not many of the Czech orchestras who were in the festival looked happy playing contemporary music. But they did it, and some quite well. Mařatka had the bad luck to draw the most recalcitrant ensemble.
But the audience reaction to his piece was tremendous — immediate and enthusiastic, with sustained applause for the composer and singer. And in the end, that’s whose vote counts the most.
   


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