Czech Music

[cjvinthechair]

Hejnar/Krcek - thank you, Mr. Grew !

[cjvinthechair]

Gentlemen - & particularly Mr.(?) Legius: what do we know about this 'Filefactory' download method ? It seems to want money, just for starters. Do we have any reason to trust it ?
Thank you.

[guest54]

Gentlemen - & particularly Mr.(?) Legius: what do we know about this 'Filefactory' download method ? It seems to want money, just for starters. Do we have any reason to trust it ?
Thank you.

It's all right - been going for years.

1) Make sure you click on "Slow Download" - in red near the bottom of the page. (No money required that way.)

2) Just close any advertising page that might pop up

3) Wait for the count-down of 30 seconds or so, which you will see ticking on your screen

4) Then just click where it says "Click here to begin your download"

But one disadvantage is that - unlike Mediafire - you may (or may not) have to wait for a time before you will be permitted to download a further file.

And thanks to Legius for the music!!

[Legius]

FF is quite good, but Mediafire is better - that´s true. So I have changed it.
Thanks to Mr. Grew. Enjoy the music!

[cjvinthechair]

Ah, that's much appreciated - thank you ! Even a dinosaur like me has some familiarity with/faith in Mediafire.

[MVS]

Um... I'm noticing that some works I had posted on the UC site are being repeated.  Would anybody object if I moved my uploaded Czech works still at UC over to this site?

[Jolly Roger]

Um... I'm noticing that some works I had posted on the UC site are being repeated.  Would anybody object if I moved my uploaded Czech works still at UC over to this site?

If anyone here objects, they should see a doctor..by all means..do that..

[MVS]

Well, much to my amazement, and relief, I had already transferred almost everything.  Whew.  Just a few left to bring over.  For some reason, I feel better knowing they are all where they really belong - on this wonderful site!  :)

[MVS]

I also uploaded the Valek Sym. 13.  I could have sworn either I or someone else had uploaded this to either the UC site or this one, but I can't find it!  If this is a duplication, let me know, and I'll remove it. 

[cjvinthechair]

Mr. MVS - thank you ! Valek - had, from somewhere, 4,9,11,12...but not 13 !

[Elroel]

Vaclav Kaprál:  Lullabies for middle-range voice with small orchestra on Slovak folk poetry texts  (1932) posted by MVS

Just for the sake of completion, the original title of Václav Kaprál's Lullabies is Uspavanky.

Thank you MVS for at least Petr Eben's 'Hours of the Night'. I recorded it off radio, years ago, but in such a bad condition, I never listened to the recording.

The Válek 13th was uploaded much earlier at UC (not by me), but I can not find it there either.

I will follow MVS by copying the files I uploaded to UC, to this site, although most of them are already here. I'll check.

[Dundonnell]

Thank you so very much, Sydney for the opportunity to download the broadcast Finnish performance of Kabelac's "Mystery of Time"-indeed a favourite work :) :)

I had been alerted to the film over on The Good Music Guide Forum. I watched the performance and wrote quite a lengthy critique......which no one has responded to :(

This is what I wrote:

"I had never thought that I would live to actually see a performance of this work!

It is a difficult piece to bring off. Pacing the piece, building and maintaining the tension is all -important and Hrusa does a much better job of doing this than Vladimir Valek with the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra in a recording I have from 2008. The Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra is an excellent orchestra and they are playing music which, presumably, they were totally unfamiliar with. All in all, it is an excellent performance. No...not quite the equal of the historic Ancerl with the Czech Philharmonic from 1960 but, let's face it, that is probably an impossible ask. Ancerl was a great conductor and he had at his disposal an orchestra unrivalled in its time in Czech music.

The key moments for me are at around the 10-11 minutes into the recording where the horns, followed by the trumpets need to carve through the texture of the music in a way which really must make the listener's hair stand on end (yes, I know...hardly a very scientific way of expressing what I mean ;D). The Czech PO's brass have a "blaring quality" which achieves that end so successfully and in such a truly terrifying fashion. The Finnish brass do well but with not quite so dramatic an effect. Their woodwind are superb but, at times, the strings are not quite so successful in conveying the power of the music. Nicholas Kenyon once described an orchestra of students playing the Berlioz Requiem at the London Proms as playing "as if their very lives depended on it" and it is that sense of total and utter commitment which the piece needs. The Finns get very near....to be fair to them.

The closing pages of the piece also require very careful handling. After the huge climax at around 18 minutes in there is that wonderful, gradual winding-down but that needs to convey a sense of mysticism (in a way akin to the last movement of the Vaughan Williams 6th symphony) in which the inherent tension is not dissipated through too much relaxation, in which there is a sense of exhaustion after the shattering power of what has come before but no sense that the work is simply "petering out".

No doubt this is all hopelessly subjective and my incapacity to convey in words to describe exactly what I mean may well render it meaningless to others.

It is a very good performance and I am most deeply appreciative of the kindness in providing the link."


(The composers whose music has been discussed most recently over there are Ligeti, Terry Riley, Stockhausen, Feldman, Cage, Boulez and Nono. You can probably understand that I feel slightly uncomfortable in such company ;D).

[Dundonnell]

I have just posted on the conductor Jakub Hrusa's Facebook page asking him to, please, record the work for cd :)

[mjkFendrich]

Thank you so very much, Sydney for the opportunity to download the broadcast Finnish performance of Kabelac's "Mystery of Time"-indeed a favourite work :) :)
....
I have just posted on the conductor Jakub Hrusa's Facebook page asking him to, please, record the work for cd

The Austrian OE1 will broadcast the same programme again on May, 30th, 19:30 in Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound quality
from a Vienna performance to be given at May, 23rd - now with the ORF Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien
and Johannes Moser as soloist for the Martinu cello concerto (in Finland we have had Sol Gabetta).
 
http://oe1.orf.at/programm/373789

I'll try to record that performance in original digital quality (don't have surround equipment myself, but a 2 channel track
should be automatically included within the final "transport stream" file). 

[guest182]

The composers whose music has been discussed most recently over there are Ligeti, Terry Riley, Stockhausen, Feldman, Cage, Boulez and Nono. You can probably understand that I feel slightly uncomfortable in such company.

Don't worry - in 2050 they will be the unsung and forgotten. In fact they are not much sung even now.