Hosporova Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra Kucera Brauner - Czech Viola Concertos - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Karel Husa - a Czech-born composer whose name resonates more on an international scale than in his native country. The winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the Grawemeyer Award, he was commissioned to write music for the New York Philharmonic, and other distinguished orchestras and artists. The centenary of Karel Husa's birth is a unique opportunity to recall his remarkable fate and oeuvre. During World War II, he lived in Nazi-occupied Prague. Following his graduation from the Prague Conservatory, with a concert performed with the Prague Symphony Orchestra (1944), Husa left for Paris to study composition with Arthur Honegger and Nadia Boulanger. The performance in Prague of his Three Frescoes with the Prague Symphony Orchestra in 1949 made it evident that Husa's music no longer fitted the Communist ideologues' pigeonholes. Yet Husa did not return to his homeland, opting instead to continue his studies abroad. Later on, he settled in the USA. When it comes to the Warsaw Pact armies' invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968, he got to hear about it on Detroit Radio. Husa expressed his dismay in Music for Prague 1968. The piece contains a quotation of the 15th-century Hussite war song Ktož jsú Boží bojovníci, by which the composer also referenced Václav Talich's emotional performance of Bedrich Smetana's My Country in Nazi-occupied Prague. Husa could only begin freely visiting his beloved Prague in the wake of the November 1989 Revolution, yet he pointed out that he kept strolling the city streets in his dreams and works. The present album maps Husa's creative periods between 1947 and 1983, and it features the very first studio recording of his Three Frescoes.

And the sculptor fixes the likeness of a face in clay. And you walked by and passed before his work, and you glanced at the face and then walked on your way. And then it happened that you were not quite the same. Slightly changed, but changed. The motto Bohuslav Martinu chose from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's Citadelle for one of his Parables also poetically defines the transformational power of his final orchestral opuses. Following the six symphonies composed in the USA, he wrote them in Europe, much closer to his homeland. The orchestral triptych Les Fresques de Piero della Francesca was inspired by the work of the Italian Renaissance master. As Martinu himself put it InchThe frescoes harbor a peculiar kind of solemn and rigid tranquility, abounding in strange, serene and moving poetry; it is the darkened colored atmosphere I strove to express in music.Inch The Parables is another piece in which Martinu reflected his philosophical ideas, with each of it's three movements treating an allegory of life and human quest in the world. The symphonic prelude The Rock refers to the landing place of the English settlers who came to North America in 1619, as well as Martinu's own fate as a homeless pilgrim. Martinu's very last symphonic work, Estampes, comes across more as a fine drawing interwoven with silence than an impasto, as is the case of his previous orchestral pieces. These brilliant, extraordinary Martinu works are yet to gain the recognition they so richly deserve. The new Supraphon recording, made by the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra under the renowned conductor Tomáš Netopil, affords hope that this will be set right. It would be a pity to miss out on such beauty. Bohuslav Martinu's late pinnacles - beauty and profundity yet to be discovered.

Within a mere few years, Petr Popelka has established himself as one of the world's most exciting young conductors. Serving as principal conductor of the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Wiener Symphoniker, he has also appeared as a guest with prominent European and American orchestras, as well as at opera houses worldwide. Popelka does not view Bedrich Smetana's legacy as an obligatory Czech national classic, but rather as an object of love and vital artistic quest. InchHis ultimate masterpiece, My Country, should be approached a bit like an opera, as a great story... As a cycle of tone poems based on the theme of the homeland, it is absolutely unique in the history of music. Most significantly, there is not a work written with greater love.Inch Popelka's recording is not just yet another addition to the immense number of recordings of My Country. Bringing to bear his great musicality and acute sense of detail, the conductor and the orchestra have modelled a truly exceptional form. Popelka's album features other germs too. String Quartet No. 1 in E minor, InchFrom My LifeInch, hailing from Smetana's mature period, when the composer was completely deaf, in George Szell's brilliant orchestration. In contrast, Smetana's early music is represented by the Triumphal Symphony, dedicated to the wedding of the 24-year-old Emperor Franz Joseph I to Princess Elisabeth of Bavaria, and three InchSwedishInch Liszt-inspired symphonic poems, based on dramas as immense as Shakespeare's Richard III and Schiller's Wallenstein. The extraordinary album marks the 200th anniversary of Smetana's birth. Lovers of spatial sound will certainly relish streaming My Country in the Dolby Atmos . Petr Popelka conducts Smetana - with love, deep feeling and sense for detail