STYLE

Finding the Balance Between Personal

Life and Work Was the Biggest Win,

Says SHF Director Igor Františák

The St. Wenceslas Music Festival (SHF) is the musical love of the managerial life of Igor Františák,

the active assistant professor of clarinet at the University of Ostrava. Let’s review in brief the

challenges he faces in the organisation of such a grand festival.

You’ve managed to develop the largest festival of

sacred and early music in the Czech Republic in

a formerly strongly-communist region, which will soon

celebrate its eighteenth year. How do you perceive the

SHF development from your position as director and

dramaturge?

In 2003, my friends and I founded a civic association

that produced an annual music festival exclusively in

sacred spaces throughout the region. In the first year

alone, we presented an incredible thirty-one concerts,

which were met with extraordinary visitor interest.

Very soon, the festival gained recognition and became

one of the most representative music festivals in the

country. Since then, we have organised over 1,000

concerts and created hundreds of recordings, which

we are now gradually making available through our

YouTube channel.

Naturally, we have faced various complications and

challenges over the years, whether financial, existential

(changes on the festival team) and even of temperature –

where I decided after ten years of its existence to move the

festival date from October to September due to the cold in

the churches.

SHF is one of the premier cultural events of the MoravianSilesian Region and the City of Ostrava. Thanks to this

support, we were able to start year-long series of Musical

Journeys, presenting exclusive musical productions

ranging from classical music through jazz and folklore,

all in the most acoustically and architecturally interesting

churches, castles, and industrial spaces across the region.

In 2018, we organised 100 concerts to symbolically mark

the centennial of the founding of Czechoslovakia. In 2019,

we created a new Czech-Polish project known as Music

Without Borders, though it had to be discontinued due to

the pandemic.

In the time of ‘coronavirus cultural darkness’ you were

forced to make a major change, where you had to

transform the whole dramaturgy into a solely Czech

version. You couldn’t perform in front of a live audience,

you taught online. You admit to re-assessing your life – so

in what direction are you now heading?

The past period was really quite a test for everyone. SHF

is planned more than a year in advance, so we had the

whole seventeenth year already prepared by the time the

pandemic broke out. In April 2020, it became clear to me

that the situation would not be resolved quickly, so by the

end of the month I decided to convert the dramaturgy

to a purely domestic one. This move soon proved to be

‘visionary’, as I had the opportunity to approach the best

Czech musicians. Moreover, in June 2020 we created

a three-festival project ‘Connected by Music‘ to support

Czech artists in times of crisis. Our festival was one of the

few that managed to actually hold their concerts in 2020

on the traditional date, and in full!

However, my professional, but above all personal, life

changed significantly during this time. Although strict

government regulations cut me off from my active

musician’s life, I was all the more able to spend time with

my family, with whom I now live in the ‘wilderness’ outside

Ostrava. Now I finally feel a sense of purpose in my life.

Finding a balance between my personal life and a work that

is both my mission and my hobby, has been the biggest win

to emerge from this otherwise unpleasant period.

Mr Františák, thank you for the interview.

Text: redakce

Foto: Ivan Korč

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