Jitro Czech Girls' Choir Skopal - Gratias - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Their fourth with Navona Records, OPENINGS by the Jitro Czech Girls Choir and conductor Jirí Skopal presents the rich beauty of the Czech Republic's national dances, folk texts, and songs for audiences around the world. Composer Bohuslav Martinu believed that music holds the power to open our minds to a new, transcendent understanding of time, nature, and tradition. The first piece on OPENINGS, Primrose does so with buoyant joy. The bright, airy timbre of the children's choir is radiant, with lyrics that conjure up pastoral images of the beautiful Czech countryside. From the Czech word Inchpetrklíc,Inch Primrose symbolizes Saint Peter's key which opens the earth each spring as the ice and snow of winter recede. Next comes Songs for a Children's Choir, composed by Martinu in Switzerland during 1959-the last year of his life. The piece borrows texts from collections of Czech folk songs and poetry, employing the tight, sculpted harmonies of Jitro. The album's final track, Opening of Spring, relates the story of a springtime queen, laden with flowers, followed through the country hills by a procession of townspeople. OPENINGS is an apt title for this newest album by the Jitro Czech Girls Choir, not only because of it's focus on spring and renewal, but also because it offers a portal through which listeners of all backgrounds may appreciate and enjoy the beauty of Czech culture. With technical precision and infectious exuberance, the girls of Jitro lovingly offer the songs and stories of their people to all who listen.

Jirasek / Jitro Czech Girls Choir / Skopal - Jan Jirasek Parallel Worlds [COMPACT DISCS] date 06/09/2017

The Jitro Czech Girls Choir, under the leadership of conductor and music director Jirí Skopal, presents yet another vivid exploration of the depths of traditional Czechoslovakian music on their fourth with Navona, JITRO IN HEAVEN. The tone for the album is set by Liturgical Chants, five pieces which express the spiritual and musical code of European culture. These pieces are composed by Petr Eben, an icon of 20th-century Czech music. The emotional depth of the chants is also expressed in three parts of the cycle Four Choruses on Latin Texts. Written in 1973 for children's or girls' voices, the work is based on anonymous medieval texts. Catonis Moralia is also derived from Latin texts, this time from the 3rd Century; their translation by Czech philosopher, pedagogue, and theologian Johann Amos Comenius is used as the basis for combining the style of Baroque dance suites with instrumentally conceived choral polyphony. The poetry of Vítezslav Nezval, hovering at the boundary of the worlds of childhood and maturity, is mirrored in the imitative cycle Ten Poetic Duets, one of which, InchScorrendo Tranquillamente,Inch highlights the pristine vocals of soloist Barbora Novotna. The album concludes with About Swallows and Girls, a miniature analogy of Bach's Art of the Fugue. Here, Eben has offered a wealth of variations of vocal arrangements of Bohemian, Moravian, and Silesian folk songs while retaining their folkloristic flavor. Eben's artistic vision never loses respect for his sources, or for their simplicity and humanism. The voices of the young girls in the Jitro Czech Girls Choir declaiming and proclaiming the ancient Latin words usually sung by adults or, when offered by young singers invariably by boys, lends JITRO IN HEAVEN an interestingly modern slant. That more contemporary take on these timeless texts serves to create a dynamic musical offering that fully captu