Prague

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It sometimes feels that, at least socially and politically, the Czech Republic is still struggling to shake off the last vestiges of communist rule. But culturally the country has clearly leapt into the modern world.

Prague Spring (www.festival.cz) is still the heavyweight among local music festivals, 61 years old in 2006 and a favourite among virtuoso performers like violinist Gil Shaham, singer Anne Sofie von Otter and pianist Garrick Ohlsson. But one new development that’s bound to attract more audiences is the end of Prague’s traditional summer dearth of quality classical music; during July and August, the Czech Philharmonic and the Prague Symphony Orchestra (usually at Rudolfinum and Municipal House) and the State Opera all go on extended vacations.

Czech National Symphony Orchestra general manager Jan Hasenörhl programmed the debut Prague Proms last year with an eye toward filling that gap, packaging concerts by ethnicity (American night, Japanese night, Italian night). The repertoire runs from Verdi’s Requiem to crowd-pleasers like Ravel’s Bolero, with an occasional shameless nod to tourist tastes like John Williams’ music for Star Wars.

Former Prague Philharmonia director Ilja √mid has taken the same tack with his Prague Music Festival, mixing in popular faves with hefty doses of serious Czech composers and outstanding soloists like expatriate pianist Antonín Kubálek. The results of √mid’s series have been hit and miss, but some of the concerts are as good as their better-known counterparts in the spring and fall (Prague Autumn, www.prazskypodzim.cz, is also turning heads these days).

The Prague Music Festival books orchestras from cities like Teplice and Ostrava, which can be surprisingly good. And Prague Proms offers late-night jazz sessions with notable local stars after some concerts.

Visual arts
As with most European cinema, Czech film is struggling, despite producing talents like surrealist Jan √vankmajer, visionary Milo∫ Forman and local hero Jan Svêrák, is struggling. But you can catch the best of it, old and new, plus indie work from around the world at Svêtozor, now part of the city’s best rep house group.

 

On the art scene, the brave new world’s particularly apparent – it’s even led to a grand old fight. The city will stage two competing megashows in summer 2007.

 

The battling biennales – an indie one by the editors of Italian art magazine Flash Art International (www.praguebiennale.org) and a National Gallery one (www.ng.cz) – have the local art world bitterly divided and the general public greatly amused.

 

The National Gallery’s version, the International Biennale of Contemporary Art, tends to be a bit unimaginative, despite the name, and is held at Veletr∆ní palác while the Prague Biennale draws an inspiration-hungry crowd to the industrial Karlín distict’s Karlín Studios. Better still, an ‘anti-biennale’ sprang up in 2006, which is an off-year for the other biennales, called Tina B – an acronym for This Is Not Another Biennale (www.tina-b.com).

 

Prague art venues continue to blossom as well. The doyen of indie spaces, at all of five years old, is Galerie Display, located in a graffiti-splashed storefront in the Hole∫ovice district of Prague 7 – an area that is slowly burgeoning into an art centre, anchored by Veletr∆ní palác. These artist-run spaces are demanding an ever more prominent place on the gallery map. Educating the Czech art public and nurturing the careers of contemporary artists are the twin aims of the handful of private galleries, including the new Hunt Kastner Artworks, also located in art hotspot Prague 7.

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