After having paid tribute to the legacy of the Czech Chamber Orchestra, Supraphon has now commemorated another ensemble connected with the violinist and conductor Josef Vlach, a gifted pupil of Josef Talich. Established in 1950, since 1954 the Vlach Quartet performed in the line-up in which it had triumphed in the competition in Liege and in which it conquered stages worldwide and made all the recordings featured on this album. Two exciting quartets, teh Smetana and the Vlach, were active in Prague, ensembles whose difference represented an inspiring polarity of approaches to music interpretation. Ivan Medek thus described the personality of Josef Vlach, who with kindness and authority alike formed the quartet's soul: ''Similarly to Talich, Vlach was not a scholarly artist. Yet he possessed a remarkable ability, an acute sense for that which is really strong and communicative in music. His intellect seemed to be constantly fed from an immense source of profound emotional inspiration.'' The Vlach Quartet recorded Beethoven's quartets within 10 years. Given the year in which it was recorded, 1956, the ''bonus'' Mozart quatet in D minor is one oft he ensemble's oldest recordings made soon after their victory in Liege. The presented Beethoven tracks are merely part of the Vlach Quartet's remarkable legacy, which encompasses quartet works by Czech composers, as well as by Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Debussy and Ravel.

Jirí Antonín Benda spent his prime years at King Friedrich II’s court orchestra in Berlin and serving as court Kapellmeister in Gotha, yet his works were an integral part of 18th c. Prague’s musical landscape. His six published volumes of keyboard music – much influenced by his Berlin colleague C.P.E. Bach – various instrumental sonatas, church music, and songs is enchanting in its simplicity, impressive expression, gallantry and wit. The artists on this recording immersed themselves in Benda’s musical universe, bringing their ample performing experience to bear on these works of irresistible charm.

Ivo Kahanek, Jan Fiser and Tomas Jamnik rank among the most distinct Czech musicians of their generation, both as soloists and chamber players. Under the name Trio Concertino, they started to perform under the guidance of Josef Chuchro and Ivan Klansky. In accordance with the ensemble's new name, their debut recording primarily focuses on Dvorak. The emotional apex of this CD is Smetana's Trio in G minor. The recording reveals the fundamental virtue of the young ensemble: A unique balance between spontaneous energy, performance experience and consistent well-considered delivery of the work. This trio is a chamber ensemble impossible to overlook.

Antonín Dvořák’s op. 53 is now part of the repertoire for all the world’s great violinists. Josef Suk’s G minor Fantasy For Violin and Orchestra is a kind of virtuoso, rhapsodic symphonic poem. Janáček’s late, concise Violin Concerto, ‘The Wandering of the Soul’, combines great energy and urgency. Josef Špaček, the youthful concertmaster of the Czech Philharmonic, recorded these concerts live with “his” orchestra under its principal conductor Jiří Bělohlávek. The Forbes Magazine in the Czech Republic included Josef Špaček in their 2014 list of most influential “30 under 30” people.

The recordings made by Václav Neumann, the charismatic music director of the Czech Philharmonic from 1968, form one of the cornerstones of the symphonic repertoire in Supraphon’s archive. The majority of listeners, however, will not be familiar with the albums dating from the prior 1953-68 period. Neumann already enjoyed international renown by the time he became head of the Czech Philharmonic. Under his baton, the splendid Prague Symphony Orchestra made the very oldest recordings of Dvořák’s early symphonies (Nos. 1, 2 and 4), a recording of Trojan’s orchestrated version of Tchaikovsky’s The Seasons, while the Czech Philharmonic recorded Mahler’s enchanting song cycles and major international and Czech modern works – by Messiaen (with the composer’s wife Yvonne Loriod at the piano), Bořkovec andSommer. This set symbolically closes with Dvořák’s Nocturne, recorded by Neumann with the Czech Philharmonic in 1968, mere weeks after the invasion of Czechoslovakia by forces of the Warsaw Pact. A number of these unique and sensitively remastered recordings are being released on CD for the very first time.

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The complete recording of Jacks’s Kingdom, the final opera by Otakar Ostrcil (1879-1935), a remarkable fairy-tale work with an antiwar message, is now being released on CD for the first time. It is based on L. N. Tolstoy’s short story about a land ruled by the good-natured Ivan (transformed in the opera into Honza, or Jack) who knows not what spite is. In his kingdom, soldiers do not wage wars, yet dance and love, all diseases are cured and people are happy. Honza brings to all the people the miraculous star of compassion, love and peace, possessing so great a power that it even cures the incurable Princess and prevails over the Devil himself. When the opera was premiered in Brno (1934) and subsequently presented in Prague, it gave rise to a conflict between Ostrcil and a part of Czech society. The reason why the work, in which Honza fights with the Devil, striving to conquer the world, became a sensation was that it was staged shortly after Adolf Hitler had seized power in Germany. In the wake of World War II, another four productions of Johnny’s Kingdom were created in Prague and Brno, with the most recent one receiving its premiere in 1959. The present release features the one and only studio recording of the opera, made in 1954 by the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, with Ivo Žídek, Jaroslava Vymazalová and Premysl Kocí singing the lead roles. The album also contains a unique recording of Ostrcil’s Calvary, Op. 24, made in 1957 by the Czech Philharmonic, conducted by Václav Neumann.

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Within a short time, early music enthusiasts had to say their farewells to two personalities who, for half a century, influenced the development of what we call the authentic interpretation of early music: Gustav Leonhardt and Nicolaus Harnoncourt. In 1950 Supraphon made a complete recording of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos performed by a chamber ensemble led by a musician of Czech origin, Josef Mertin (1904–1998). A scholar and organ builder as well, he relentlessly “dusted” the works of composers from the previous centuries (including Guillaume de Machaut), stubbornly seeking the way to give their music its authentic sound. The names of his pupils who took up his legacy make an impressive list that includes Claudio Abbado, Mariss Jansons and Zubin Mehta. Mertin has managed to win a number of students for the interpretation of early music on period instruments, among them musicians without whom we can hardly imagine the field nowadays. The Brandenburg Concertos were performed by an ensemble whose members were the 22-year-old cembalist Gustav Leonhardt (playing the solo in Concerto No. 5), a rising violin star Eduard Melkus and a year younger violoncellist Nicolaus Harnoncourt. It was the first time that a chamber size of the ensemble and period instruments were used. Hopefully, listening to the recording will convince you that it is more than just a historical document. As far as Mertin and Harnoncourt are concerned, this unique recording is also a proud reminder of their Czech roots.

This DVD includes a documentary on the renown Smetana Quartet and also includes performance footage by the quartet of Smetana's String Quartet #1 in E Minor and Quartet #2 in D Minor, along with Dvorak's Sextet in a Major, Op. 48.

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