REINER(CARNATION) / MORAVIAN AUTUMN

KAREL REINER

Tři písně milostné (Three Love Songs)
Listopadové popěvky (The November Songs)
Květovaný kůň (The Flowered Horse)
Esther, music for folk theatre play

Aida Mujačić voice, piano, editing of the songs
project programmer Pavel Straka

In his life and works, the Czech composer Karel Reiner (1910–1979) epitomises the 20th century with its twists, upswings and shadowy places. An avant-gardist in the 1930s, he was involved as composer and pianist in promoting Alois Hába’s quarter-tone system, and also attended the 1932 Cairo Congress of Arab Music. He exerted a significant influence on the music in EF Burian’s “D” theatre and edited the musical supplement of Eva, a modern women’s magazine, in which he published songs with piano accompaniment by composers including Bohuslav Martinů, Miroslav Ponc and himself. He then found himself in the wheels of the Nazi machine and its infamous Nuremberg Laws, but fortunately his life philosophy linked with influences from Rudolf Steiner, leftist values and a zeal for educating children offered him a perspective and he survived Theresienstadt, Auschwitz and the Dachau Kaufering subcamp.

In this programme devised by Aida Mujačič and Pavel Straka, Reiner, his works and philosophy of life are reincarnated and made present in performances on a prepared piano.