Current Affairs The Czech musical avant-garde of the twenties celebrated at Prague's Archa Theatre
A woman sighs, moans, and cries out with delight - this isn't the soundtrack from a late-night movie, but one of the works in a classical music concert. It's a composition from 1919 by one of the masters of the inter-war avant-garde in Czechoslovakia, Erwin Schulhoff, and it's called the Erotic Sonata, a solo for what the composer described as a "mother-trumpet" - in fact a single female voice, a work with a fascinating score of scribbles, lines and dots. It was one of many works performed on Tuesday night at the Archa Theatre, as part of the Prague Spring International Music Festival. David Vaughan was there.
Emil Frantisek Burian
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