Hudební skladatelka

The symphony, my introduction to her music, seemed to fly by. Its 45 minutes of sometimes tender, sometimes brutal and chaotic, but always intriguing textures and rhythmic intricacies made architectural sense, and her immersion into Jewish, Gypsy and occasionally plain-song modalities gave its tonal harmonies an esoterically dark hue.

Its four movements, slow-fast-slow-fast, made huge demands on both winds and percussion, and Zimmerman, who led here with a lot less athleticism but more clarity than in the Dvorak, had both these sections impressively on their toes. Calm, baroque-like canons unfolded beneath off-balance trumpet rhythms in the second movement. Copland-like English horn lines emerged cleanly from long passages of string fog in the third, and the aggressive percussiveness of the fourth movement paused just long enough for a moment of Bach chorale to shine through.

Joan Reinthaler is a freelance writer

http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/music/a-bright-program-in-which-dvorak-wasnt-the-feature/2015/02/08/702eecbe-afa2-11e4-bf39-5560f3918d4b_story.html

Sylvie Bodorová wrote Mysterioum druidum for Englichová and the Chamber Music Festival in Tucson, Arizona. It’s for harp and strings, as with the Lukáš. The work is inspired by Celtic myth and bardology, and the three movement work celebrates them in sound. The first movement takes their trees as its central motif, and there’s fiercely evocative writing as well as one of her surging tunes – listen from around 3:40 (it’s tremendous). The second movement is called Vindobona, the name of a Celtic settlement in what is now Vienna. This sounds intriguingly like a very stripped-down Tallis Fantasia – there’s a baronial elegance as well to the writing before bardic soliloquies for the strings. This unleashes a hell-for-leather finale in which Fire Demons prevail; the daemonic dance is infused with folklore once more and full of vitality and drama. ... Jonathan Woolf - MusicWeb
View this article =>

Washington Post, Monday, May 4, 2009

Violinist Chee-Yun was soloist in Czech composer Sylvie Bodorová's "Concerto dei Fiori" for violin and strings, whose U.S. premiere Zimmerman led in 1998. This tonal but restless 12-minute work includes lovely lower-string writing and a spectacular cadenza halfway through -- in which Chee-Yun showed prodigious technique. The concerto, mostly quiet and thoughtful, ends not with flowery spectacle but with a quotation from Bach's Cantata No. 180.

Mark J. Estren

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/03/AR2009050301972.html

Sylvie Bodorová wrote Megiddo in 2001, a work that owed its genesis to a visit the composer made to Israel when she was working on her excellent Judas Maccabeus. She was there to study aspects of ritual singing as well as particular approaches to melody and melismatic singing. Things start with a somewhat hieratic determination but the writing is splendidly refined, advancing by Seurat-like brushstrokes or more gaunt and sinewy 'pillars'. Throughout the ear is kept alive by her series of aural devices. Affecting lyricism, quiet and keening, occupies the slow movement; folkloric hues are not far away either though they are, it's true, sublimated. The piano here becomes ever more romantically effusive until the biting, terse end of the movement. The finale, Armagedon, is powerfully rhythmic and driving but ends with quiet reminiscence, as did the Fiala. ... Jonathan Woolf - MusicWeb
View this article =>

Sylvie Bodorová's Megiddo piano trio owes its title to an eponymous location in Israel, 'where I realised how human everything was - compared with the long breath of history - how small, irrevocable, mortal.' The piece was written in 2001 as a commission from the Leamington Festival in England. The piece has at once a kind of monumental strength, established in the powerful opening statement, as well as a fragility expressed in atmospheric and soulful tonalities and a sense of freedom between the players. There are some 'variable elements' introduced in the second movement, but in comparison with Fiala's works there is in any case a sense of greater space between the instrument, or between strings and piano. Even where unity drives the music, special resonant sustain effects in the piano separates the power of the notes from a kind of silent non-silence. sample The composer states that 'the work concentrates on peculiarities of texture', but there is also a great deal of emotive expression going on in the second movement, and the final Armagedon launches itself with punishing, rhythms which build to an apocalyptic climax. With a return to the mournful sensations earlier in the piece, the work concludes in softly treading mystery. ... Dominy Clements - MusicWeb
View this article =>

Sylvie Bodorová’s Carmina lucemburgiana for Strings was written for this disc and takes its inspiration directly from the world of John of Luxembourg and Machaut. She weaves motifs and techniques from Machaut’s music into an attractive modern synthesis. The result, despite Bodorová’s modernist credentials, sounds remarkably like something from Respighi’s Ancient Airs and Dances. ... Robert Hugill - MusicWeb
View this article =>

These songs are richly crafted but not burdened by either the precious or the inflated. They are natural sounding, wholesome, and sound - in fact - of the soil and the root. They have been written with affection and honesty and are beautifully performed by all and sundry. The brief synopsis of each song will have to serve, as there are no texts, but you will get the gist every time. ... Jonathan Woolf - MusicWeb
View this article =>

Bodorová's seems, in one way or another, to be bound up with the composer's feelings about the death of Ton de Leeuw with whom she studied briefly in the 1980s. It is a melodic work as you would expect if you have heard any Bodorová before. The music moves ecstatically between the peaceful polarities of Bach's violin concertos, of the Finzi Introit and the Barber violin concerto. It is a most beautiful work and radiates an aura of contentment - of blessing. From a decade later comes Bern Concerto which has a less vulnerable human heart although Bodorová drops the defences once in the first movement before the steely springy writing returns. A tender Amorevolmente with echoes of the middle movement of Tippett's Triple Concerto separates the first movement from the third which once again has strong Tippett DNA. ... Rob Barnett - MusicWeb
View this article =>

Bodorová’s Juda Maccabeus is a strong, thought-provoking and important musical statement that deserves, maybe even demands, to be heard. ... Colin Clarke - MusicWeb
View this article =>

Her haunting Terezín Ghetto Requiem of 1997 (commissioned by the Warwick Festival) is a triumph of the imagination. Referring to actual events – the approximately twenty performances of the Verdi Requiem in 1943-44 at Terezín – Bodorová’s piece uses excerpts from both Jewish and Catholic liturgical texts.Bodorová’s own account of her visit to Terezín in September 1997 to hear Verdi’s Requiem is reprinted in the booklet. Her stated aim – ‘I want my music to contribute … to the ideal of tolerance and humanity’ – is laudable in the extreme.The Terezín Ghetto Requiem is scored for baritone and string quartet. Its three movements (Lacrymosa, Dies irae and Libera me) last a total of just over a quarter of an hour in total. The opening Lacrymosa quotes from Verdi’s Requiem and the Jewish prayer Shema Israel. The careful use of widely-spaced chords, the delicate atmosphere and the pure first violin of Lubomír Havlák all contribute to the resultant intense concentration. Nigel Cliffe (a member of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden) declaims to perfection.The Dies irae text is almost spat out by Cliffe, contrasting with the gentle, hushed ‘Libera me’. Cliffe’s voice is focused as he intones the words on a single note. The repetitions of the word ‘Domine’ at 2’20 in this final movement are imbued with a certain desperation which perhaps could have been even more shattering in effect than Cliffe manages, but nevertheless this is an unforgettable piece.
View this article =>

The event of which I write was a San Francisco Performances-sponsored concert featuring the Skampa String Quartet from Prague, the beautiful capitol city of the Czech Republic. The quartet is composed of violinists Pavel Fischer and Jana Lukasova, violist Radim Sedmidubsky and cellist Peter Jaruseki. Accomplished American baritone Christopheren Nomura joined them to perform Czech composer Sylvie Bodorova's 1998 "Terezin Ghetto Requiem." Dedicated to victims of the Holocaust, this is a work likely to become one of the most soul-stirring, ultimately hopeful pieces of the late 20th century.