Beachcombing on the Vltava

By way of making amends for not blogging for a week, here is the second post in 24 hours.

On arriving back in Cesky Krumlov I went for a favourite walk of mine along the banks of the Vltava River through the town. Already preparations are underway for the so-called improvements to the river – barriers have been put up ready to exclude people from the worksites, large concrete pavements are being laid to carry the heavy machinery. Then of course there are the sad stumps of the trees which had shaded and softened the walk in happier times.

I decided that I would take the opportunity to beachcomb one more time. Along the river there are small beaches covered with all sorts of treasures. In a matter of 15 minutes I had collected shards of pottery (some of it old), pieces of old tile, slag from some metal working and granite pebbles. In this medieval town you can find your own piece of history and put it in your pocket. The supplies are constantly renewed, as the river rises and falls with the seasons. On the riverbed, I gather, there are more treasures – people who have dived near the castle say there are cannonballs in there and larger rubble. Of course all this will be destroyed with the “improvements”. Have they done an archaeological survey? I doubt it.

The Ales South Bohemian Gallery – Collection Of Medieval Art

The other day my husband and I decided to play the tourist and go on a trip to the Castle at Hluboka, well not the castle as such but the Gallery which is to be found attached to it. So we joined the hoards of German schoolchildren as they wound their way up from the town below. The zigzag way offered good views across the Vltava and the fish ponds towards the blue hills and mountains of the south. The castle is built in the English Gothic style of Windsor and other Victorian palaces, a white confection of crenellations and faux gargoyles standing in beautiful gardens again of the English style. Unlike the Germans our way took us to the left into a conservatory of flamboyant cast iron and glass, then left again and into the Collection of Medieval Art of the Ales South Bohemian Gallery.

The collection was a revelation and one, which had it been say at the Tate in Liverpool, we would have made an overnight visit to see and thought it worth the money. There were two large galleries filled with medieval statuary (calvaries, saints, Madonnas with and without child, and pietas) and religious paintings from altar screens. The pieces had been gathered from all over South Bohemia, and featured the work of both local craftsmen and others working in nearby Bavaria. What was particularly striking to us was the familiarity of the places from which the art works had been taken, not only were they from large wealthy towns and abbeys such as Ceske Budejovice and Kajov, but from small local villages and churches such as Boletice and Novosedly, a sign of the wealth perhaps of this fertile region at the time. The oldest exhibit is a statue of St Bartholomew from Horni Drkolna from before 1300 – the saint is simply but effectively carved from a lump of limewood with a head out of proportion to the body. The Gallery allows one to move through the development of Czech Gothic art from that simple piece. As time goes by the artistic style evolves, developing more natural proportions, and even movement. The facial features change and vary, some show the influence of Byzantine art, others the become individualised.

Throughout our visit we were alone in the Gallery apart from the two gallery attendants that followed us round. The tourist hoards clearly preferred the excesses of 19th Century English Gothic to the sublime purity of the original medieval Gothic of Central Europe. It is a shame that this is so, this is a collection of international importance.

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.