The Novák Trio (oboe, clarinet, bassoon), which builds on the long Czech tradition of music for wind instruments started by Reicha, is a busy ensemble, annually performing about fifty concerts in the Czech Republic and abroad. This CD offers music by living Czech composers which has been directly dedicated to Novák trio. Composers include Ilja Hurník, Tomás Svoboda, Jirí Gemrot and Jaroslav Krcek.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Jan Vicar belongs to the authors who combine a songwriting career and teaching at the musical colleges specializing in musical aesthetics and theory. His profile album named after the composition ''Way to the Sun'' contains a very interesting cross-section of his work from the eighties to the present day. We will meet with compositions influenced by ''Polish schools'', synthesizing songs and very popular and humorous adaptations of Czech and Moravian folk songs. Recording of the project took place in Olomouc, a city where Jan Vicar grew up and where today the University operates.

The new CD “Schwer ist’s das schöne zu lassen” (It is hard to leave beauty) features the complete lieder for soprano and piano of Viktor Ullmann (1898–1944), a victim of the Auschwitz death camp. A resident of Prague before the war, Ullmann found inspiration in the work of Gustav Mahler and Arnold Schönberg and was very close to Schönberg’s Second Viennese School younger contemporary Alban Berg. The accompanying booklet brings sleeve note by Czech musicologist Eliška Reittererová describing the details of the life and work of Viktor Ullmann and new English translations of all the songs.

Hal�r Trio is an ensemble based on the outstanding Spanish violinist Eduardo Garc�a Salas. For years, the main goal of the ensemble has been to revive the character of the outstanding Czech violinist Karel Hal�r (1859 - 1909), who was an important personality in the musical life of the late nineteenth century. Hal�r himself played regularly in a piano trio, so it is only fitting that the ensemble aiming to revive his legacy plays in such a formation. For this release, the ensemble has recorded the piano trio from Enrique Granados (Piano Trio in C Major, Op. 50) and Anton�n Dvor�k�s Piano Trio in F minor Op 65. The Hal�r Trio is cellist Jana Podolska, pianist Vaclav Macha, and violinist Eduardo Garcia Salas.

ArcoDiva’s 2CD ‘Nox et Solitudo’ offers a portrait of Czech mezzo Eva Garajova, as accompanied by pianist Marian Lapšanský. + Ms. Garajová sings not only well known and famous songs by Tchaikovsky, Dvořák and Brahms, but also lesser known compositions by significant Czech and Slovak 20th c. composers: Štefan Németh-Šamorínský, Vladimír Sommer and Eugen Suchoň. + The accompanying CD booklet features both original texts and English translations. + Ms. Garajová is considered one of the greatest song literature interpreters of her generation in the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

Mahler Contemporaries, a live concert recording from the Gustav Mahler Festival 2014, offers a range of well and lesser-known songs by friends, contemporaries and collaborators of Mahler, including Hugo Wolf, Pauline Viardot, Hans Rott, Richard Strauss, Arnold Schönberg and Bruno Walter, among others. The world premiére recording of Czech composer Josef Bohuslav Foerster’s Stabat Mater, Op. 56 opens proceedings; several of his songs also feature. Sung by winners of Karlsbad Int’l Singing Competition, the concert was recorded in the same Jihlava Church where Mahler started to listen to music.

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Classical Music

This recording, occasioned by the 200th anniversary of the composer’s birthday includes compositions from various phases of his life: from the early Nocturne, Op. 9 to the posthumously published Polonaise in G flat major, the Andante spianto and Polonaise, Op. 22, two Etudes from Op. 25, along with compositions from his mature work. The Fantaisie-Impromptu in C sharp minor, Op. 66 is meant as a kind of musical introduction. Maria Gabrys was born in Warsaw to a musical family and studied at the Fryderyk Chopin Music University in Warsaw, where she now teaches, and the Lucerne High School of Music.

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Cellist Mikael Ericcson became a finalist in the 1978 Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, the first Swede to do so, and in 1980 he won the first prize in the Prague Spring Competition. He founded the String Duo Vlachová-Ericsson with his wife and the Vlach Quartet Prague. “The music on this CD is from both my original homeland Sweden, and from my new homeland, the Czech Republic. The recording also contains some of my own works, this being their CD premiere. These pieces are, in different ways, inspired by folk music from both of my home countries.” – Mikael Ericsson

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