Jaromir Havlik writes: “Loss of hearing forced Smetana to leave his position at the Provincial Theatre and withdraw from social life and his musical career. In 1876 he moved to his daughter Zofie´s house in Jabkenice. Here he was able to enjoy the calm and quite needed so that he could focus on his compositions. The change in his circumstances made him reflect on his life and he captured his feelings in his String Quartet No. 1 in E-minor From My Life. Smetana described the work as “intimate and private music for four instruments talking about my life”. However, the opposite was true of this epic score of program music. Until this time the techniques used by Smetana in this quartet had only been used by composers writing for symphony orchestra. He used symphonic techniques with brilliant effect for chamber music. From 1892 to 1895 Dvorák was the director of the National Conservatory in New York. He composed many masterpieces during this time and one of them was his String Quartet in F Major, Op. 96, American. It is one of Dvorák’s most played works and one of the most popular works in the chamber music repertoire. Filled with joy and optimism, Dvorák tried to capture the characteristics of American music, using pentatonic scales, syncopation and melodic themes of typical American revue music. After the successful premiere of Dvorák’s Slavonic Dances, German music publisher, Simrock, asked Dvorák to compose more pieces in the Slavonic style. At first Dvorák declined, but then changed his mind and he composed Eight Waltzes for Piano, Op.54. These waltzes are straightforward, jovial and uncomplicated. Dvorák arranged two of the waltzes for string quartet and they were premiered by an ad hoc ensemble with the first violin played by his friend Ferdinand Lachner…”

Oliver Schnyder (piano), and Andreas Jahnke (violin) and Benjamin Nyffenegger (cello) perform Smetana's Piano Trio in G Minor and the famous "Dumky"-Trio by Antonín Dvořák. The Oliver Schnyder Trio made their debut at the Zürich Tonhalle in 2012. Their recording of Schubert’s Piano Trios was hailed “a new benchmark recording” by the magazine Die Bühne and was chosen as “Switzerland’s Best Classical Album of the Year” by the Aargauer Zeitung. This immediate success was confirmed by the recording of Brahms’ complete Piano Trios, which also received great critical acclaim and was given a “Milestone” from Musik & Theater. Past and present concert appearances and festival residences include the SWR Schlossfestspiele Ettlingen, WDR Funkhaus Köln, Liederhalle Stuttgart, Festspiele Baden-Baden, Alte Oper Frankfurt, Schloss Elmau, Meisterzyklus Bern, Ittinger Pfingstkonzerte, Menuhin Festival Gstaad, Wigmore Hall, Concertgebouw and Muziekgebouw, Musikdorf Ernen, the Hirzenberg Festival and the festival Universum Beethoven, where they took part in a complete cycle of Beethoven’s Piano Trios at Boswil and Muri, alongside the Trio Jean Paul and the Wanderer Trio.

For four decades, Marie Podvalová (1909–1992) was one of the most popular and sought-after opera singers of the National Theatre in Prague, where she was engaged from 1937 to 1978. She dazzled in the part of Bedrich Smetana’s Libuše, which she created in 1938 under the guidance of the conductor Václav Talich, as well as in the roles of Milada in Dalibor and Anežka in Two Widows. She also appeared in Dvorák operas, performing to acclaim Armida, the Foreign Princess in Rusalka and Julie in The Jacobin, and in Janácek works, primarily excelling as Kostelnicka in Jenufa.

Supraphon is for the first time releasing the complete studio recordings Marie Podvalová made between 1939 and 1950. The set encompasses three songs from the collection Venec ze zpevu vlasteneckých (A Garland of Patriotic Songs, 1835–1844), which she performs accompanied on the piano by J. B. Foerster. It contains Marie Podvalová’s final, previously unreleased, studio recording, with the soprano singing Beatrice in a scene from Zdenek Fibich’s opera The Bride of Messina. The album also captures the voices of Jan Konstantin, Jindrich Blažícek, Marta Krásová, Ivo Žídek, Jaroslav Gleich, Zdenek Otava, Štepánka Jelínková, Jaroslav Jaroš, Josef Otakar Masák, Maria Tauberová, Ludek Mandaus, Stanislav Muž, and other singers. The Prague Symphony Orchestra and the National Theatre Orchestra are conducted by Rudolf Vašata, Zdenek Chalabala, Jaroslav Krombholc, František Škvor, Zdenek Folprecht, Otakar Jeremiáš and Karel Nedbal. The release marks the 30th anniversary of the legendary artist’s death.

Quite often, a work becomes a journey of discovery towards a certain origin, translated into sound. Martin, Mansurian and Dvorák composed three such colorful works for piano trio – voyages of discovery taken here by the Delta Piano Trio through scintillating sound worlds. When an Irish-American benefactor asked him to write a work based on Irish folk songs, Martin grasped this as an exquisite opportunity to combine two of the quests occupying him at the time – music from distant cultures and rhythm. his Trio sur des mélodies populaires irlandaises (1925) is a complex, mature and multi-layered score.

The Armenian composer Tigran Mansurian (b. 1939) gives the term a deeper meaning with the idea behind his 5 Bagatelles (1985): the smallest things can have the greatest significance in life. Each bagatelle sounds like a moment when truth opens up; crystal clear while at the same time beyond our comprehension.

Like many artists of the Romantic era, Czech composer Antonín Dvorák (1841-1904)let his music flourish from his deepest roots, his origins. His unique style represents a melting-pot of all sorts of characteristic elements of music and dance from his beloved Bohemia with the classical idiom. An example is the famous Piano Trio no. 4 (1891), based on the 'dumky', epic folk ballads depicting a tragic historic event. In much the same way that Martin, Mansurian and Dvorák each made their own voyages of discovery in their compositions, the Delta Piano Trio has also reached the heart of these three works.

ArcoDiva presents this new unique album of Dvořák's unreleased pieces. Despite the fact that at the moment there are many recordings of piano works by Antonín Dvořák, for whatever reason some compositions have never been included on these releases. We are now gladly presenting you those pieces for the first time on a publicly released album. All of the compositions are played by Tomáš Víšek.

Víšek is one of the most significant Czech pianists of his generation. Born in 1957, he studied at the Prague Conservatory (prof. V. Kameníková, Z. Kožina) and the Prague Academy of Arts (AMU) – first under prof. J. Páleníček and then under prof. Z. Jílek with whom he continued post-graduate studies in 1990–1993. In 2017, he obtained the Ph.D. title at the Pedagogical Faculty of the Charles University in Prague (his dissertation was titled “Attraction and Problems of the Antonín Dvořák ́s Piano Works”).

Exclusive Chandos Artist Laura van der Heijden’s label debut explores the rich musical heritage of Bohemia. Born in England to Dutch-Swiss parents, Laura’s career highlights already include winning the BBC Young Musician competition (aged just 15), the Edison Klassiek Award 2018 (for her debut album) and BBC Music Magazine’s Newcomer Award in 2019. Laura writes: ‘Jâms and I first met in 2017, where I heard him play and was mesmerized by the sensitivity of his musicianship and the colors he managed to create on the piano. Our first concert together took place in the summer of 2018 and included Janácek’s Pohádka. Both of us felt incredibly drawn to this piece and also to Janácek’s musical language. One of the reasons we were particularly enamored of Pohádka (a Czech word which loosely translates as ‘A Tale’) was the focus of the piece on storytelling and how that invited us to let our creativity and imagination flow. This is the common thread spun throughout the repertoire that we have selected for this album; all the pieces embody the notion of passing on ancient folk tales, tales which have lived amongst peoples and across lands for centuries.’

REVIEWS:

The starting point for this delicious and distinctive Bohemian programme was Janácek’s Pohádka...Laura van der Heijden and Jâms Coleman unleash its power in this big-boned reading, with its hair-trigger transitions from dreaming innocence to cataclysm.

--- BBC Music Magazine

As a creative concept, it is carried through convincingly. The players clearly share a tangible musical understanding and rapport, and catch Pohádka’s ambivalent quality very neatly.

-- Gramophone