Prague Symphony Orchestra

Tomas Brauner, Prague Symphony Orchestra – Smetana, Dvořák, Suk, Ostrčil: Music for Prague (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:15:17 minutes | 2,52 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © SUPRAPHON a.s.

The story of the Prague Symphony Orchestra is closely related to the history of the Czech capital, which leaves an impression on their repertoire. After their successful recording of Karel Husa’s Music for Prague 1968 (Supraphon, 2021), the orchestra and its chief conductor are coming up with another album dedicated to Prague. This time, the programme is focused on the late 19th century, i.e. the period when the Czech nation fought for its language, culture and identity within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The backbone of the record is Suk’s monumental symphonic poem Praga, based on the Hussite chorale, “Ktoz jsu Bozi bojovnici” (Ye Who Are Warriors of God); Vysehrad from Smetana’s famous cycle Ma vlast (My Country); and a rarity: Pohadka o Semiku (A Tale of Semik), which is a largely unknown symphonic poem based on an ancient Czech legend connected with Vysehrad, by Otakar Ostrcil, composed when he was nineteen. And of course, there is Antonin Dvorak. In hardly any work of his is Dvorak as explicitly patriotic as in his overture My Home (which is not very well known either). It is based on the theme of the popular song “Kde domov muj,” which later became the Czech national anthem. Another rarity of this album is Dvorak’s fanfare for the opening of the National Jubilee Exhibition in Prague. After their acclaimed recording of the composer’s Slavonic Dances, the Prague Symphony Orchestra confirm that the Czech repertoire of late Romanticism is their native and most natural language.

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Tomas Brauner, Prague Symphony Orchestra – Dvořák: Slavonic Dances (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:18:34 minutes | 2,73 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Supraphon a.s.

Highly impressed by the Moravian Duets, even though the set had yet to be issued, the Berlin-based publisher Fritz Simrock wrote to the young Antonín Dvořák, commissioning from him another work and outlining his idea of its being in the fashion of Brahms’s Hungarian Dances. The composer duly sketched the first series of Slavonic Dances within a few hours, and completed the version for piano four hands in three weeks. At the same time, he worked on the orchestration. In an extensive essay in the NationalZeitung in Berlin, the influential critic Louis Ehlert lauded Dvořák so keenly that he brought the then unknown Czech artist overnight fame: “I consider the Slavonic Dances a piece that will circle the world just as Brahms’s Hungarian Dances have… Divine naturalness circulates in this music… Dvořák writes such cheerful and singular basslines that the heart of a true musician jumps for joy… I think how wonderful it would be to see once again emerging a musician about whom we would need to argue as little as about spring.” During the first year after its publication, selected Slavonic Dances were performed in Prague, New York, Boston, London, Berlin, Dresden, Hamburg, Cologne, Bonn, Nice, Graz, Lucerne, and other cities… Dvořák’s music is deeply engraved in the DNA of the Prague Symphony Orchestra, who have performed it under conductors of such renown as Jiří Bělohlávek, Charles Mackerras, Václav Neumann, Tomáš Netopil, etc. The new recording, made with Tomáš Brauner, the orchestra’s current music director, draws upon an illustrious interpretation tradition, with its rounded and transparent sound capturing the best qualities of the exquisite Art Nouveau Smetana Hall of the Municipal House in Prague.

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