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December 1st, 2008
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Last blast of summer

Traditional sounds bring another lively season on the island to a close
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By Darrell Jónsson
For The Prague Post
August 27th, 2008 issue

Photo copyright MIROSLAV PINĎAK
Jiří Pavlica, center, has taken the band to a global audience while staying true to its Moravian roots.
Hradišťan


When: Thursday, Aug. 28, at 7:30
Where: Střelecký ostrov
Tickets: 250 Kč in advance, 300 Kč day of the show, available through Ticketstream and at the venue. The concert will be followed by a screening of Obrazy starého sveta. For more information, see www.strelak.cz
The summer festivities on Střelecký ostrov wind up this week with a final flurry of music and film, starting Thursday night with a concert by the Moravian dulcimer band Hradišťan.
Founded in 1950, Hradišťan has consistently sought to bring the spirited spontaneity of Moravian folk music to the changing regional and world music landscape. The invitation the band received to Peter Gabriel’s Womad in 2001, and its ongoing schedule of Czech Television appearances, recordings and concert work speaks well of the group’s capacity to attract audiences near and far from the hills of Moravia.
Although Hradišťan is founded on tradition, part of that tradition includes music with historic influences that wander as wide as traveling Carpathian violin players and the Moravian dulcimer’s likely origin in Persia. The group’s 2007 CD Chvění (Indies label) finds artistic director Jiří Pavlica incorporating musicians and sound from the Central Asian republic of Altai, with the help of the African-inspired Czech drum troupe Jumping Drums and the Brno Philharmonic Orchestra.
But, no matter where their musical ventures takes them, Hradišťan remains close to the Moravian hearth, both in sound and presentation. Preferring to call their live events “meetings” rather than concerts, Hradišťan violinist Michal Krystýnek says, “The audience becomes a kind of co-dramatist of each evening.” Speaking further about the group’s musical approach, Krystýnek adds. “As our founder Jaroslav Staněk used to say, ‘It is difficult to talk about love to someone who is in love.’ There are six of us, and we all have to take part in the harmonics together. The program planning had great importance in the times of introducing the new sound of Hradišťan at the beginning of Pavlica’s era. Nowadays it is more about intuition and feeling, trying to get as close to the characteristic sound and expression as possible.”
Much of the intuition that has kept Hradišťan compelling to several generations of listeners is attributable to the direction of Pavlica. Since 1975, he’s led the group into a successful recording career as well as maintained their visibility as one of Moravia’s most in-demand live folk music acts. Although some of these projects have included symphonic orchestras, Hradišťan’s music remains different from the romantic nationalist notions once fashionable in historical classical music. Speaking of the perspective and endurance Pavlica brings to the group, Krystynek says, “I think the main difference between Pavlica and national-school composers is that none of the 19th and early 20th-century composers were folk group leaders, and their point of view was therefore more external.”
Appropriately, Hradišťan’s upcoming concert will be outdoors, on a unique river island location where cold beer and hot films have been served in a park atmosphere for the past 12 years. Střelák began as simply a summer outdoor cinema. Responding to Prague’s eclectic audiences, venue programmers expanded into designer film/concert events aimed at delivering cultural enrichment as well as entertainment. Střelák’s dedication to diversity over the past two seasons has included matching the confrontational Flamenco theater of Von Magnet with Carlos Saura’s Carmen, Ni & DJ Wich’s night of live hip-hop mixing with the film Block Party, and this Thursday’s coupling of Hradišťan’s timeless Moravian folk music with Dušan Hanák’s award-winning 1972 documentary Obrazy starého sveta (Pictures of the Old World).
Sunday night will feature a free concert by a new local group, Pohřebni kapela, who rock the west Bohemian thread of traditional music into a form approximating ska. On Monday night, the final film showing of the year is The Dark Knight at 9. Catch the fun while you can. With commercial pressures building to revitalize and reconstruct the island, the sort of magical nights Střelák has given Prague for more than a decade of summers may soon be the stuff of memories.

Darrell Jónsson can be reached at features@praguepost.com


Other articles in Night & Day (27/08/2008):

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