Showing posts with label classical music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label classical music. Show all posts

Monday 14 April 2008

Iva Bittova


Back at the turn of the year I blogged about local musicians Kvinterna. So I reckon it is about time I talked about another favourite musician of mine – Iva Bittova. She is an artist that I came across on the world music website Calabash Music. I downloaded an album and was hooked.

Bittova is an artist whose every album I religiously buy. I have yet to be disappointed or bored - the great thing about this wonderful Czech artist is that each album she produces is different and totally unlike anything else you have may have heard from anyone else. Her music is fusion music at its most varied, bringing together the Movavian folk music of her childhood, jazz, the avant-garde, nursery rhymes and classical. Whilst she does get extraordinary sounds from both her voice and violin, Iva Bittova also can be melodic and sublime.

Nowhere is this more evident than in her moving and heartstopping performance in Godar's Mater – a suite on the subject of motherhood for female voice, choir and baroque string orchestra. I bought Mater shortly before Christmas 2006 and played it obsessively for a week, and with each play I found myself crying during the Stabat Mater.

Monday 31 December 2007

Kvinterna




In my last post I wrote of the frustrating invasion of the ubiquitous pop and rock concert into the New Year's celebrations at Cesky Krumlov. But not all is lost - on Sunday at the Museum of Building Crafts, in Dlouhá street, the wonderful Kvinterna gave a New Year concert of "Ancient and Alternative Music".

Kvinterna is a local group fronted by singer Hana Blochova. The group specialise in medieval, renaissance Christian and Jewish music, as well their own improvised music, but basically their music has a wonderful spirituality and so much more suited to my mood at this time of year. For an example of their click the above link to Youtube.

My favourite cd from them is Landscape of Sweet Sorrow, which brings together songs of the Sephardic Jews and Moravian folksongs and shows the similarities between these very different traditions. For more about Kvinterna, visit their website http://www.kvinterna.cz. And if you want to buy their cds you can either visit Cesky Krumlov's classical music shop on Latran near the bridge, where the owner will, if you wish, soon be suggesting all sorts of other Czech musical delights as well as Kvinterna, but if you can't make it to Krumlov visit http://cdmusic.cz for Czech music at Czech prices.

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