Czech Radio, Station Vltava, 28.10.2016, 10 p.m., programme Radioatelier (premiere)
Credits:
Futurist Soirée (20 min.)
Opening Performance Orchestra and guests Pavel Z, Phaerentz, David Danel and Tomáš Vtípil
Pavel Z - recitation
Phaerentz - recitation
David Danel - violin
Tomáš Vtípil - violin
Opening Performance Orchestra - concept, 3 intonarumoris
"In antiquity, life was nothing but silence".
It was nothing but this statement, this quotation from the introduction
to The Art of Noises manifesto by Luigi Russolo, that inspired us to start contemplating our own music
contribution to the futurist theme. These contemplations date back to the nineties, when our ensemble Opening
Performance Orchestra did not even exist yet and when our music works were only being composed in our
thoughts, discussions and speculations. A real impulse came in 2013, seven years after the formation of the
Opening Performance Orchestra: the ensemble was invited by Martin Klimeš, a founder of the club Bludný
kámen (Erratic Boulder), to participate in the third year of the Minimarathon of electronic music, which is held as
a biennial of the Ostrava festival of contemporary music called Days of Ostrava. That year of the festival was
dedicated to Italian futurists to commemorate the one-hundred-year anniversary of Russolo's manifesto The Art
of Noises. Our original intention was to present our contribution, called The Noise of Art, as a purely digital noise
performance with text extracts from the Russolo's manifesto in the original interpretation of Pavel Z, a poet,
musician and founder of DG 307 band. At the same time, however, we left open the possibility of acquiring an
intonarumori, because the idea of using these original instruments of Italian futurists as a sound essence was
very tempting for us. The first testing prototype of intonarumori was constructed for us at no charge by Milan
Guštar, a composer, electronic equipment designer and programmer. The professional production was later
provided by Jan Kolář, a cabinetmaker and a technical jack-of-all-trades. The use of intonarumori was preceded
by numerous consultations concerning the construction and sound parametres of these instruments with Werner
Durand, a German musician and performer, and Liciano Chessa, an Italian composer and conductor, founder of
the Orchestra of Futurist Noise Intoners ensemble.
After an intense and noisy celebration of The Art of Noises at the Ostrava Minimarathon, our intonarumoris
were heard at the benefit concert for the music magazine HIS Voice in a revised version of The Noise of Art
composition. For the next three years, they were waiting for another chance to come. The opportunity came in
the autumn of 2015, when Ladislav Železný, a script editor and producer at the Czech Radio, invited us for the
event called Art's Birthday 2016, which had been organized by the Czech Radio since 2005 and which was
dedicated among others to music invasions of Italian futurists. For this event we decided to prepare a purely
acoustic composition named Futurist soirée, which was performed by four other soloists in addition to three
intonarumoris. We composed three enharmonic parts for intonarumori and the violinists David Danel and Tomáš
Vtípil prepared variations and improvisations of music quotations of a futuristic theme and of other avantgarde
music movements of the last century. Pavel Z and Phaerentz performed extracts of texts from the original
futuristic manifestos - the Futuristic Manifesto by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and the Manifesto of Futurist
Musicians by Balilla Pratella. The concert that took place in the premises of the Trade Fair Palace of the
National Gallery in Prague was broadcasted live in nineteen European public radio stations associated in the
Euroradio Ars Acustica Group.
In February 2016 we made a recording of the Futurist soirée in the A Studio of the Czech Radio in Karlín in
Prague with the assisstance of Ladislav Železný and subsequently in the studio called Jamor of Ondřej Ježek.
The recording was made by the same performers as at the Art's Birthday 2014 event, and the composition will
be performed in this version in October 2016 during the premiére in the international EBU exchange network.
Annotation in Czech on rozhlas.cz