Czech actor and composer Jan Klusák (b. 1934) was among the first Czechs – the Communist regime’s resistance notwithstanding – to embrace the techniques of the Second Viennese School, New Music, dodecaphony and serialism. The presented set of “Inventions” shows the ground Klusák has covered over the more than half a century since the first of them was completed (1961).

After more than eighty years, Supraphon has revived it's historical sublabel bearing the name of ARTONA and released it's first title: PRAGUE CLASSICS - a musical souvenir from Prague. Originally, ARTONA was a sublabel of the ULTRAPHON gramophone company, predecessor of today's SUPRAPHON publishing house. For the first time this label appeared in the spring of 1932 bearing the supplementary characteristics of "local product". The main reason for establishing the side label was Ultraphon's effort to come up with recordings that might appeal to the general public both by their contents and price. Supraphon now re-introduces this sublabel with the aim of publishing compilations that will please the lovers of the most famous and popular melodies offered by classical music. On the present release, A Musical Souvenir from Prague, experience the magic atmosphere of Prague through the works of classical music written by composers who were in one way or other connected with Prague. We offer you here a musical walkthrough with Anton�n Dvor�k, Bedrich Smetana, Leo� Jan�cek, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Gustav Mahler as well as leading Czech orchestras and ensembles. Quite rightly, Prague is considered to be one of most beautiful European cities. It's monuments including the Prague Castle, the Charles Bridge, the astronomical clock of the Old Town City Hall or the Old Jewish Cemetery make the "golden city" one of the most frequently visited tourist destinations in Europe. Prague's unique charm also attracts artists from all over the world and it's "genius loci" has inspired a number of composers both locally and internationally. Allow the city and it's music to charm you too!

Anton�n Dvor�k had a passion for chamber music; he liked playing it with friends, and perhaps soon came to realize how good a commercial commodity such pieces represented. He wrote the first of his two piano quartets at the age of 34, by which time many a publisher was interested in his works. The Czech media voiced their satisfaction that Dvor�k had moved beyond foreign influence, with the Slavic spirit having prevailed in his music. Cases in point include his Moravian Duets, Op. 20, and Serenades, Op. 22, created at the same time. The publisher Fritz Simrock bitterly regretted having rejected the first quartet, persistently reminding the composer: "I would gladly take a piano quartet, preferably even two". When in the summer of 1889 Dvor�k got down to writing his second quartet, he complained of having a "slow hand", yet stressed that he had plenty of ideas: "My head is full of it... I have finished three movements of a new quartet with piano, and the finale will be ready in a few days. It has gone smoothly beyond expectation, with the melodies rolling in to me." The sheer beauty of the piece was cogently described by the prominent Vienna-based critic Eduard Hanslick: "The quartet requires that the listener be considerably attentive and well informed, which, however, really pays off." The ensemble bearing the composer's name have linked up to the feted tradition of their great teachers - Ivan Moravec, Josef Vlach and Milan �kampa. They present Dvor�k at his finest, both conventional and sophisticated.

Warning: this recording is not intended for musicological purists. But if you love spontaneous music making in the most select of company, this is definitely the right recording for you. Radek Babor�k, for example, does not hesitate to arrange a discarded movement from a symphony to add as the missing movements of an unfinished horn concerto. Of course, to tell the truth, didn't Mozart himself do the exact same thing countless times? In this way, the preserved fragments are turned into two "new horn concertos." The Sinfonia concertante for four wind instruments and orchestra, K 297b is a work surrounded by many mysteries, and it fits beautifully in this context of discovery. Here, it is recorded in Babor�k's arrangement for Mozart's original instrumentation. Playing the solo parts are virtuosos from Europe's best orchestras. For the 12 horn duets - the only completely extant composition on this album played in it's original instrumentation - Babor�k's partner is another of today's legendary horn players, Radovan Vlatkovic. Radek Babor�k and his friends are inviting you on an excursion to the world of their elder colleague Wolfgang Amadeus - with his inexhaustible supply of jokes, ideas, and colors.

Amongst the works of Bedřich Smetana, operas are at the forefront alongside the cycle of symphonic poems Má vlast as the linchpins of the composer’s creative legacy. Nine operas in all, the last being unfinished, demonstrate the composer’s dramatic talent and individuality.

The history of the Supraphon label has seen the making of a series of Smetana opera recordings interpreted by generations of Czech singers who performed mainly on the stage of the Prague National Theater. The first and only time Smetana’s operas were published as a complete set on record by Supraphon was within a vast four-part project covering his complete works released in the Year of Czech Music between 1984 and 1985. This representative set contained the recordings dating from the 1960s through the 1980s, but with the exception of The Bartered Bride, they are not currently available on the market as physical products.

To the still unsurpassed recording of The Bartered Bride and The Secret under the baton of Zdenek Košler, we are adding his exceptional 1983 production of Libuše for the reopening of the Prague National Theater. We are also including the only Supraphon recording of The Brandenburgers in Bohemia led by Jan Hus Tichý, Zdenek Chalabala’s still definitive reading of The Devil’s Wall, and Dalibor conducted by Jaroslav Krombholc.

This luxurious 17CD box contains seven separately packaged 2-CD sets plus one 3-CD set with detailed information about the individual operas, a 40-page booklet with a comprehensive study, a wealth of photographic documentation, and a link to the downloadable librettos in the Czech and English languages. This complete edition of Smetana’s operas is for the first time on CD, as we mark the occasion of the 200th anniversary of Smetana’s birth.

CONTENTS:

— The Brandenburgers in Bohemia

— The Bartered Bride

— Dalibor

— Libuše

— The Two Widows

— The Kiss

— The Secret

— Viola

— The Devil's Wall

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

"Featured composer Astor Piazzolla created a new musical genre, Tango Nuevo, that is fiercely loved by many. Works by José Bragato, a cellist who performed in various Piazzolla ensembles and arranged numerous Piazolla works, and Richard Galliano, a Piazzolla pupil and one of the world’s finest accordionists, also feature here. Accordionist Ladislav Horák and cellist Petr Nouzovskù are two renowned superlative Czech musicians who have spread the word throughout Europe at their concerts. "

For the 60-year-old Franz Xaver Richter, a composer of Moravian origin living and working in France, the spring of 1769 was a true watershed in his career. When, two years previously, he joined a competition held by Concert Spirituel, a major French music institution, he evidently had in mind being employed as a musician in Paris. The contestants' task was to compose a "motet � grand ch�ur", encompassing a sequence of arias, ensembles and choruses, set to the Latin text of Psalm 136, Super flumina Babylonis. Although Richter failed to win the competition, his work arouse great interest and on 28 March 1769 it premiered within the Concert Spirituel series at the Tuileries Palace, at the largest music venue in Paris at the time. Less than a month later, Richter was appointed the Maitre de Chapelle de Notre Dame de Strasbourg. The motet Super flumina Babylonis undoubtedly played a significant role in his being named to the prestigious post. Over the first years he spent in Strasbourg (1770-73), Richter wrote three settings of Psalm 50, Miserere mei Deus, intended for the night liturgy of Tenebrae, a religious service held during the three days preceding Easter. In addition to Super flumina Babylonis, the present album features the third setting of the Miserere, in F minor, in a premiere recording. In their fourth album of Richter's music, Czech Ensemble Baroque discover the yet to be mapped legacy of the distinguished 18th-century composer.

Shostakovich - his music is a challenge each and every quartet sooner or later has to face up to. Yet when it comes to the Pavel Haas Quartet, it seems to be in their very DNA. The ensemble's unbridled, impulsive and, now and then, frenetic energy, sense for extreme contrast, ability to bring to bear gradation from breath-taking subtlety and tenderness to symphonic drama are facets essentially incident to Shostakovich's music. Although composed in safety, away from the horrors of World War II, String Quartet No. 2 (1944) reflects the suffering, uncertainty and anxiety of living at the time (the lyrical Recitative of the second movement, as performed by Veronika Jaru�kov�, the first violin). Both dating from 1960, String Quartets Nos. 7 and 8 are truly intimate confessions. While Shostakovich dedicated the former (the shortest piece of the cycle) to the memory of his first wife, he most likely intended the latter as his own epitaph, at the time when be hovered on the thin line between life and death. Attesting to the autobiographical nature of String Quartet No. 8 is the opening DSCH motif, Shostakovich's musical signature, which reoccurs throughout the piece. The Pavel Haas Quartet surpass the abyss of time, as well as the barrier of personal physical existence, delving into the very centre of Shostakovich's music and reflecting the full scale of emotions with airiness, as if the music were their own. The Pavel Haas Quartet and (in truth) their Shostakovich. At long last!

Following their critically acclaimed debut album, the Belfiato Quintet have gone back a century in time, to the "father of the wind quintet" Anton�n Rejcha's life was adventurous and turbulent indeed. When he was 10, he ran away from his Prague home, and would live in turn in Bonn, Hamburg and Vienna, before finally settling in Paris. He presented his first symphony at the tender age of 17. Rejcha became a friend of Beethoven's, who played the viola in the same orchestra, he made the acquaintance with Haydn, and his teachers included Salieri. A keen experimenter, he liked to write in quintuple time, was fascinated by Gypsy music with micro-intervals, playing with numbers and chords, polyrhythm, polytonality and counterpoint. Moreover, he was an accomplished theorist and a renowned teacher, also working as a professor at the Conservatoire de Paris. His students included Liszt, Berlioz, Franck and other distinguished composers. Rejcha was the first to write truly masterful wind quintets, making full use of the instruments' timbres and technical potential. Notwithstanding it's being challenging to perform, his music comes across as bright, airy and gracious. The Belfiato Quintet selected three - the most beautiful and most engrossing - of Rejcha's 24 wind quintets, which they have recorded at the acoustically exceptionable Rudolfinum hall in Prague. It would seem that the virtuoso and passionate musicians have found in Rejcha a kindred spirit.

The Stamic Quartet's repertoire ranges from Baroque to 21st-century music, yet the ensemble mainly focuses on works dating from the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. Following the revelatory premiere recording of Josef Bohuslav Foerster's quartets (Supraphon, 2010), they have now come up with another striking project. Karel Kovarovic (1862-1920) is primarily known for his work as the director of the opera company of the National Theatre in Prague, as well as a conductor, while his own music has been generally overlooked. Nevertheless, Kovarovic wrote several operas, ballet and incidental music, songs, choral and chamber pieces. The Stamic Quartet has made the very first recording of his string quartets, which are yet to be published. The most remarkable of them is String Quartet No. 2 in A minor, dedicated to Anton�n Dvor�k, which six years after it's premiere in Prague (1888) was performed at the Musikverein in Vienna. Kovarovic did not finish his String Quartet No. 3, most likely owing to his being extremely busy as a conductor and his new responsibilities at the National Theatre. The new album made by the Stamic Quartet serves to prove that Kovarovic's quartets deserve to be paid much greater attention to than has been the case over the past century.