The Art-Music, Literature and Linguistics Forum
March 28, 2024, 09:10:35 pm
Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.
Did you miss your activation email?

Login with username, password and session length
News: Here you may discover hundreds of little-known composers, hear thousands of long-forgotten compositions, contribute your own rare recordings, and discuss the Arts, Literature and Linguistics in an erudite and decorous atmosphere full of freedom and delight.
 
  Home Help Search Gallery Staff List Login Register  

Czech Music

Pages: 1 ... 5 6 [7] 8 9 ... 13   Go Down
  Print  
Author Topic: Czech Music  (Read 16650 times)
0 Members and 4 Guests are viewing this topic.
Jolly Roger
Level 8
********

Times thanked: 59
Offline Offline

Posts: 2014


View Profile
« Reply #90 on: January 16, 2014, 02:08:43 am »

Am preparing to post new links :)
Thanks so much Dundonnel, I'll watch for them..

They are already posted :)
I have been eager to hear these..thanks a bunch! Thanks again for the Hanus posts as well, he has been a hard nut to crack, his music is tonal but capricious, and well worth the time.
One down, 2 to go..
Do you have any thoughts about Krejci?
Report Spam   Logged
kyjo
Guest
« Reply #91 on: January 16, 2014, 02:22:42 am »

I only know Krejci's Symphony no. 2 and Serenade (recorded by Supraphon) and can say they are highly enjoyable works. They are cast in a energetic, melodic neoclassical style in approximation to Martinu and Prokofiev.
Report Spam   Logged
Jolly Roger
Level 8
********

Times thanked: 59
Offline Offline

Posts: 2014


View Profile
« Reply #92 on: January 16, 2014, 02:34:50 am »

I only know Krejci's Symphony no. 2 and Serenade (recorded by Supraphon) and can say they are highly enjoyable works. They are cast in a energetic, melodic neoclassical style in approximation to Martinu and Prokofiev.
Thanks Kyjo, that gives me a good general idea of what to expect from Krejci.
Report Spam   Logged
kyjo
Guest
« Reply #93 on: January 16, 2014, 08:04:35 pm »

Many thanks to MVS for the numerous Czech uploads :)
Report Spam   Logged
guest128
Guest
« Reply #94 on: January 17, 2014, 03:30:18 am »

Many thanks to MVS for the numerous Czech uploads :)

What stands out among them in anyone's judgement?
Report Spam   Logged
Dundonnell
Level 8
********

Times thanked: 137
Offline Offline

Posts: 4081


View Profile WWW
« Reply #95 on: January 17, 2014, 03:44:42 am »

Many thanks to MVS for the numerous Czech uploads :)

What stands out among them in anyone's judgement?

It is taking me all my time to keep up with downloading them all and copying them to an external hard drive and cataloguing them.......... ::) ;D

Listening to them ??? ??? Ha!
Report Spam   Logged
Jolly Roger
Level 8
********

Times thanked: 59
Offline Offline

Posts: 2014


View Profile
« Reply #96 on: January 17, 2014, 03:45:17 am »

this may be useful to Czech and Slovak devotees.
http://classical-music-online.net/stat/?person_type=composer&type=country_persons&country=CZE
http://classical-music-online.net/stat/?person_type=composer&type=country_persons&country=SVK
Report Spam   Logged
Dundonnell
Level 8
********

Times thanked: 137
Offline Offline

Posts: 4081


View Profile WWW
« Reply #97 on: January 17, 2014, 03:55:18 am »

Thanks for that :) Very useful.

Report Spam   Logged
Jolly Roger
Level 8
********

Times thanked: 59
Offline Offline

Posts: 2014


View Profile
« Reply #98 on: January 17, 2014, 04:44:12 am »

Thanks for that :) Very useful.


I've found many of things I would never have known about by using the inquiry by country...Glad it was useful!
Report Spam   Logged
MVS
Level 2
**

Times thanked: 12
Offline Offline

Posts: 80


View Profile
« Reply #99 on: January 20, 2014, 06:05:04 pm »

I've put a new Mediafire link for the Blatny "Zlony."  I did more work to clean up the grit and noise on the original LP.
Report Spam   Logged
cjvinthechair
Level 6
******

Times thanked: 49
Offline Offline

Posts: 804



View Profile
« Reply #100 on: January 21, 2014, 12:54:01 pm »



It is taking me all my time to keep up with downloading them all and copying them to an external hard drive and cataloguing them.......... ::) ;D

Listening to them ??? ??? Ha!

Ah, but we love it ! Listening to them...now, never thought of that !     Many thanks, Mr. MVS.
Report Spam   Logged

Clive
jowcol
Level 5
*****

Times thanked: 30
Offline Offline

Posts: 502



View Profile
« Reply #101 on: February 25, 2014, 04:07:55 pm »

Music of Jan Novák


From the collection of Karl Miller


Cappricio for Cello and Small Orchestra (1958)
Frantiscek Kopency, cello
Announcer credits this performance to Brno Philharmonic/Otakar Trhlik
According to OCLC:, it is the Symonicky Orchestr Cd. Razhlasu/Alois Klima
Source LP: Supraphon DV 5819

Balletti for Nonet (1955)
Czech Nonet
Source LP: Supraphon SUA 10031

Philharmonic Dances (1956)
Nurnberg Symphony Orchestra/Josef Hrncir


Loci Vernales
Richard Novak, Bass
Brno State Opera Orchestra/Frantisek Jilek
Source LP:  Supraphon ST 58852

Cantata Dido
Marilyn Schmiege, soprano
Paul Kelly, tener
Werner Klemperer, narrator
New York Choral Artists
New York Philharmonic/Martin Turnovsky
[April 1986]


Bio from www.jannovak.eu
Jan Novák was born on April 8th, 1921 in Nová Říše, a little town in southwest Moravia. The place is dominated by a Premonstratensian monastery, which has been in its time an important center for culture and music. Nová Říše is also the birthplace of the Vranický brothers Pavel and Antonín, themselves well-known Viennese composers at the end of the 18th century.

Novák’s parents were first employed in the monastery, then his father made himself independent as a bookbinder. The boy received a thorough education in the humanities at the Jesuite School in Velehrad, a place of Old Slavonic Christian tradition, and at the classical Gymnasium in Brno. This, together with the music- and art-loving atmosphere at home, influenced the development of his personality, primarily directed towards music.

From early childhood Jan Novák showed great musical talent, especially on the violin, piano and organ. In his grammar school years this talent was already reflected in his first compositions. This took him to the Brno Conservatory, where he studied composition with Vilém Petrželka and piano with František Schaeffer. During the Second World War he was forced to interrupt his musical studies for two and a half years. Like most of the Czech students of his generation, he was deported by the Nazis to engage in forced labor in Germany. Eventually he succeeded in fleeing Germany and spent the end of the war hidden in his uncle’s home.

In 1946 Novák graduated with a string quartet and the DANCE SUITE for orchestra. He then continued his studies at the Prague Academy of Music with Pavel Bořkovec, before returning to Brno for a further period of study with Petrželka. He completed his studies with a scholarship to the USA awarded by the Ježek Foundation. There he spent the summer 1947 at the Berkshire Music Center in Tanglewood, Mass., where he worked with Aaron Copland. After that he went to New York, to meet his famous compatriot Bohuslav Martinů. He studied with Martinů, whom he called his “divine tutor”, until he returned to Czechoslovakia in 1948, on February 25th, the day of the Communist takeover. The epistolary contact with Martinů lasted even after, right through the Iron Curtain, until Martinů’s death in 1959.

Novák settled down in Brno where he lived as a freelance composer. A liberal-minded humanist, with his uncompromising artistic and public attitudes, he had recurrent confrontations with the official Czech authorities and with the leading representatives of the Composers’ Union. At that time he experimented with jazz (CAPRICCIO for cello and orchestra, CONCERTINO for wind quintet) and the dodecaphonism (PASSER CATULLI for bass and 9 instruments). Both musical languages were at that time proscripted as too “western” by the artistic dogmas of the official socialist realism.

In the mid-Fifties, Novák began to devote himself to the Latin language and literature. The soft wording and the rhythmic conciseness of Latin verse fascinated him. He began to set the poetry of Horace, Catullus, Virgil and others to music, carefully preserving the metre and rhythm of the original. Then he went on to create musical versions of the great prose works of Caesar, Cicero and Seneca, eventually using his own texts as well. When asked why the Latin language played such an important role in his work, Novák would say: “Nihil est, bone, immortalitatis causa hoc fit” (No special reason, my dear friend, I only do it for the sake of immortality).

In 1967, Jan Novák reached the high point of his popularity in Czechoslovakia with the premiere of his cantata DIDO. Even at this stage the composer made no secrets of his political beliefs: the year before he had written the music to a  Christian passion play, this being interpreted by the officials as a religious gesture and thus as a provocation. The invasion of Czechoslovakia on August 21st in 1968 took place while Novák was on a concert-tour in Italy. It was a violent shock, and decisive moment in his life. He decided not to return, his family followed him, first for a brief stay in Austria and Germany, then to Aarhus in Denmark. There, in his first year of exile, he wrote the cantata IGNIS PRO IOANNE PALACH, as the homage to Jan Palach, the young Czech student who burned himself publicly in Prague to protest against the invasion.

Then his trio for voice, clarinet and piano MIMUS MAGICUS won a Composers’ Competition in Rovereto, Italy, in 1969. Sunsequently Jan Novák decided to move to the country, which was the birthplace of Latin culture. The family settled down in Riva, on the shore of the beautiful lake Garda. In Rovereto he founded “Voces latinae”, a choir devoted exclusively to music with texts in Latin.

Although being a convinced European, it was not easy for Jan Novák to get a  foothold in the West. He couldn’t, nor did he want to, contribute to any of the preponderant musical avantgarde-streams of the time, thus becoming an outsider in the world of western contemporary music. Nevertheless, it was during these years spent in Italy and then in Germany that he composed his most important and mature works, such as his only opera DULCITIUS. He went back to Germany in 1977, to live in Ulm. Finally he was appointed in 1982 to a chair in music theory at the “Staatliche Hochschule für Musik un Darstellende Kunst” in Stuttgart.

Jan Novák died on November 17th 1984 in Neu-Ulm.

His extensive work is now becoming accessible, also thanks to the support of the Czech Republic after the political changes in 1989. President Václav Havel decreed him the Czech State Award in 1996, and in 2006 he was appointed the Honorable Citizenship of Brno.

His free use of tonality and clear structures, his creative invention, and omnipresent humour and wit, reflect his positive and humanistic view of the world, and in his pure melodic lines one can see perhaps also the Bohemian origin of this great European.
Report Spam   Logged

All download links I have posted are for works, that, to  my knowledge, have never been commercially released in digital form.  Should you find I've been in error, please notify myself or an Administrator.  Please IM me if I've made any errors that require attention, as I may not read replies.
jowcol
Level 5
*****

Times thanked: 30
Offline Offline

Posts: 502



View Profile
« Reply #102 on: February 25, 2014, 04:10:10 pm »

More Notes on Jan Novák's Dido


A note on the Narrator (aka, "Col Klink" from Hogan's Heros)
I was a bit suprised to see actor Werner Klemperer's name show up as the narrator for this performance. According to Klemperer's Wikipedia page:
Quote
Klemperer was a violinist and an accomplished concert pianist.[4] He broadened his acting career by performing as an operatic baritone and a singer in Broadway musicals. He can be seen playing in the violin section of the New Philharmonia Orchestra on the EMI Classics DVD Otto Klemperer – Beethoven Symphony No. 9. at a concert performed on November 8, 1964, at London's Royal Albert Hall. He can also be heard as the Speaker in Arnold Schoenberg's Gurrelieder, in a 1979 live performance with the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
...
After his father’s death in 1973, Klemperer expanded his acting career with musical roles in opera and Broadway musicals. He earned a Tony Award nomination for his performance in Cabaret in its 1987 Broadway revival. A member of the Board of Directors of the New York Chamber Symphony, Klemperer served as a narrator with many other American symphony orchestras. He also made occasional guest appearances on television dramas, and took part in a few studio recordings, notably a version of Arnold Schönberg's Gurre-Lieder with the Boston Symphony and Seiji Ozawa, in 1979. In 1981, he appeared, to critical and audience raves, as Prince Orlofsky in Seattle Opera's production of Die Fledermaus
.





NY Times review of Dido Perfomance:

MUSIC: ALL-CZECHOSLOVAK PROGRAM
By John Rockwell
Published: April 10, 1986


¶ THE New York Philharmonic has an all-Czechoslovak program at Avery Fisher Hall this month, and its schedule seems downright serpentine. First heard on Saturday evening, it was repeated on Tuesday and will be given again on the next two Tuesday nights with Friday afternoon, April 18, in between.

¶ The reason for this eccentricity was to accommodate the conductor Rafael Kubelik. Mr. Kubelik has had a history of heart trouble, and didn't want to subject himself to the strain of the normal four or five concerts plus rehearsals within a single week. But last July, Mr. Kubelik decided to retire altogether from conducting, and Martin Turnovsky was engaged to replace him. By then, the odd scheduling had been locked into place.

¶ Mr. Kubelik's original program remained, however, and Mr. Turnovsky did well by it. A Czechoslovak conductor who emigrated in 1968, he has been active in Europe without making a strong international career; this is his Philharmonic debut. His strengths in more general repertory remain unknown, but he handled this idiomatically congenial program with self-effacing confidence.

¶ The program consists of Bohuslav Martinu's moving elegy, ''Memorial to Lidice''; the United States premiere of ''Dido,'' a cantata for mezzo-soprano, narrator, male chorus and orchestra by Jan Novak, a pupil of Martinu, and the Dvorak Piano Concerto. Curiously, the current soloist, the Czechoslovak-born pianist Rudolf Firkusny, introduced the flashier Vilem Kurz edition of this rarely played concerto at a 1943 Philharmonic concert at which the Martinu ''Memorial'' received its world premiere.

¶ Of the program, the Martinu, with its intense emotionality that never lapses into mere rhetoric, is probably the finest piece, but the Novak seized the attention through its sheer length and insistence. Novak (1921-1984) is a special favorite of Mr. Kubelik, who has recorded this ''Dido'' score. Fascinated with the Latin language, which he spoke, Novak turned in ''Dido'' to Virgil; the scenario is the same as the Virgil-based second part of Berlioz's opera ''Les Troyens.''

¶ At first, Novak's score sounds like a really much too overt emulation of the Stravinsky of ''Oedipus Rex,'' complete with the Latin text, the driving ostinatos, the brass and percussion, even the proclamatory repeated chorus. There are also whiffs of Bartok's ''Cantata Profana'' and such other Stravinsky-influenced composers as Carl Orff and the Michael Tippett of ''King Priam.'' But for all the derivativeness of the idiom, the sweep and intensity of this score make their mark.

¶ Tuesday's performance offered some not ideally steady but otherwise nicely impassioned singing from Marilyn Schmiege, a European-based American mezzo, and some oddly accented Latin narration from Werner Klemperer. The men of Joseph Flummerfelt's New York Choral Artists were the fine chorus.


Report Spam   Logged

All download links I have posted are for works, that, to  my knowledge, have never been commercially released in digital form.  Should you find I've been in error, please notify myself or an Administrator.  Please IM me if I've made any errors that require attention, as I may not read replies.
guest377
Guest
« Reply #103 on: February 25, 2014, 05:14:29 pm »

Yes thanks for all the Czech downloads...... learned something today !!
Report Spam   Logged
jowcol
Level 5
*****

Times thanked: 30
Offline Offline

Posts: 502



View Profile
« Reply #104 on: March 18, 2014, 12:06:09 pm »

Jaroslav Kvapil: From Hard Times, Symphonic Poem

From the collection of Karl Miller

Brno State Philharmonic Orchestra/Jaroslav Vogel
Source LP: Supraphon DM 5697


Wikipedio Bio:
Jaroslav Kvapil (composer)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jaroslav Kvapil (21 April 1892 – 18 February 1958) was a Czech composer, teacher, conductor and pianist.

Born in Fryšták, he studied with Josef Nešvera and worked as a chorister in Olomouc from 1902 to 1906. He then studied at the Brno School of Organists under Leoš Janáček, earning a diploma in 1909. He studied with Max Reger at the Leipzig Conservatory from 1911 through 1913.

Kvapil was an excellent accompanist, noted for his skill in sight reading. As the choirmaster and conductor of the Brno Beseda (1919–47) he gave the Czech premičres of Johann Sebastian Bach’s St Matthew Passion (1923), Arthur Honegger’s Judith (1933) and Karol Szymanowski’s Stabat mater (1937). He received the Award of Merit in 1955. He taught at the School of Organists and at the Brno Conservatory, and he was appointed professor of composition at the academy in 1947. His students included Hana Janků, Miloslav Ištvan, Ctirad Kohoutek, Čestmír Gregor and Jiří Matys. He died in Brno[1] at the age of 65.
Report Spam   Logged

All download links I have posted are for works, that, to  my knowledge, have never been commercially released in digital form.  Should you find I've been in error, please notify myself or an Administrator.  Please IM me if I've made any errors that require attention, as I may not read replies.

Pages: 1 ... 5 6 [7] 8 9 ... 13   Go Up
  Print  
 
Jump to:  

Powered by EzPortal
Bookmark this site! | Upgrade This Forum
SMF For Free - Create your own Forum


Powered by SMF | SMF © 2016, Simple Machines
Privacy Policy