This will be the third year of the Contempuls Festival. We have to confess that the success of the first two years surprised even us. Not that we had any doubts about the quality of the programme, but probably almost nobody would have expected the festival to fall into place in Prague cultural life with such ease, or would have guessed that the response among audiences to unusual music so rarely played in the city before would be so very positive.
Yet in fact this was logical: the non-commercial, pioneering music scene is today broader than ever before, and our experience as listeners is just as wide and diverse. Today laptop electronics naturally resonate with the classical-music avant garde played on acoustic instruments. Radical minimalism is no barrier in our heads and ears to maximalist sound adventures, and deep submersion in one phenomenon does not rule out an opulent appropriation of "everything". Musical universes that seem light years apart can suddenly be unexpectedly close to each other, and predictions are almost impossible. But are heads are not inflatable balloons: great openness as listeners has its natural counterpart in an emphasis on quality. There is no typical Contempuls Festival public, but there definitely is a public that cannot bear to be underestimated. We do not pretend to be cleverer than you. We are not trying to second guess your taste, because we don't know anything about it. Taste is only predictable where it is bottled or canned. What we do know, however, is that while music that is "too difficult" (what on earth does THAT mean?) can easily captivate you but never offend you, you would never forgive us for second-rate productions in tinsel packaging.
The aim of the Contempuls Festival is to give Prague and the whole Czech Republic a musical event that the discerning Czech viewer with an interest in developments on the international arts scene (and not just in music) has lacked. A festival of a kind that in neighbouring countries has been a natural and automatic part of the cultural programme and a regular magnet for an advanced public with broad cultural interests. We are inviting top performers from abroad and presenting pieces that have had a dynamic effect on the world scene or are actually changing it today. We are presenting composers whose work has its place in international context. We are bringing you the best and most up-to-date contemporary art music and offering you direct experience of it. And a no less important aim of our festival is to stimulate the domestic composing and performing scene.