Sylvie Bodorová – a compact biography by
Jiri Štilec
Worklist
Sylvie
Bodorová (born 1954) studied composition at the Janáček
Academy in Brno and later as a post-graduate at the Music Academy
in Prague. She continued her studies in Gdansk and Siena with
Professor Franco Donatoni at the Academia Chigiana. From 1987
she regularly attended Ton de Leeuw's composition courses in
Amsterdam. Her teaching honours include a spell at the Janáček
Academy in Brno. In the 1990s she taught at CCM Cincinnati,
Ohio where she was Composer-in-Residence in 1994-95 and 1995-96.
Her works have, since the early 1980s, been performed
in all the continents, even in the Antarctic where her Homage
to Columbus for guitar was heard in 1997. Concerto dei
fiori for Violin and Strings was premiered at Prague Spring
Festival that year. The following year it was heard in the USA
and at the Pontes Festival in Prague.
She has received several competition prizes (Mannheim,
Czech Radio Prague) and many prestigious commissions, amongst
which is the 2001 Warwick Festival for the Piano Trio Megiddo.
For the same festival she wrote the Terezin Ghetto Requiem
for Baritone and String Quartet. This was for the Škampa Quartet
in 1998. The Requiem was performed at Warwick and Leamington
Festival in July 1998, at the Wigmore Hall in London in October
1998 and again in Warwick in July 1999. Other UK festival performances
followed. There were appearances for the work in Berlin on 8
November 1999, in Halle, Theresienstadt, at the Prague Spring
Festival 2000, and in Coventry and Huddersfield in November
2000.
Her Ama me for Baritone and Piano followed
in 1999, a year that also saw two major works: The Concierto
de Estío for Guitar and Orchestra for Buenos Aires and,
for Bochum in Germany, the Saturnalia for Orchestra.
After the great success of the Terezín Ghetto
Requiem the International Festival Prague Spring commissioned
the oratorio Juda Maccabeus for performance in St. Vitus
Cathedral in May 2002. It has also been given at the Litomyšl
International Festival in June 2002.
In 2003 Sylvie Bodorová completed Mysterium
druidum for Harp and Strings – a work commissioned by the
Tucson Chamber Music Festival in the USA. She finished Silberwolke
– Concerto for Violin, Viola and strings for Camerata Bern in
August-September 2005. This has been performed in Bern and in
Germany.
Her Piano Concerto was premiered in February
2006. This was written for the Prague Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra
and pianist Martin Kasík. Štefan Margita and Gabriela Beňačková
were behind the Song Cycle Slovak Songs and they recorded
it in 2006. Amor tenet omnia is a cycle of choruses on
the texts from Carmina burana. The premiere of this work
took place in Luxembourg and France in August 2007. The oratorio
Moses was commissioned by the International Litomyšl
Smetana Festival and premiered in 2008. In 2009 she wrote Carmina
lucemburgiana for strings. It was commissioned by the Luxembourg
government through its Embassy in Prague.
Her worklist includes many compositions and arrangements
for children. She is drawn to the music of Johann Sebastian
Bach. A quotation from his choral Schmücke dich o liebe Seele
appears at the end of Concerto dei fiori. Her tangy transcriptions
of the Preludium in c major from the Wohl Temperiertes Klavier
and of the Toccata d minor blend in gypsy and east European
rhythms.
Sylvie Bodorová was a member of Quattro – a Group
of prestigious Czech composers comprising Otmar Mácha (1922–2006),
Luboš Fišer (1935–1999) and Zdeněk Lukáš (1928–2007).
She has been heavily involved in the restoration
of the Gustav Mahler birthplace in Kaliště.
Worklist
www.bodorova.cz
