Henryk Górecki was that rarity among contemporary composers: the originator of a full-fledged hit. A recording of his Symphony No. 3 by the London Sinfonietta with soprano Dawn Upshaw climbed to the top of the British pop charts in the early '90s. Górecki was among the Eastern European composers for whom contemporary stylistic trends (first serialism and then the various reactions against it) took on anti-authoritarian overtones, and who thus emerged in the forefront of late 20th century music; in his works, stylistic originality seemed a personal and political necessity.
Górecki was born in 1933 in the small town of Czernica in the Silesia region of Poland. He was trained as a primary-school teacher, and did not formally become a composer until the age of 22 when he enrolled at the State Higher School of Music in Katowice. He studied in Paris for a time and became acquainted with the leading edge of the Western avant-garde. The works of Webern, Stockhausen, and Messiaen were unavailable in Poland, suppressed by socialist-realist doctrines; but all of them, especially Messiaen, influenced Górecki's early music. Górecki became a professor at Katowice and went on to gain some official acceptance, ascending to the post of provost.
Górecki's music was always deeply rooted in Polish ideals, however, and it carried a sense of the emotional impact of the atrocities of the Second World War. He ran afoul of the authorities in the late '70s, resigning his post as provost to protest the government's refusal to permit Pope John Paul II to visit Katowice. He later composed music to honor an injured Solidarity labor union activist. What gave his protests additional weight was that he had rejected Western hyper-modernism and created a new musical language that more directly served his ideals. Górecki had first gained recognition with Scontri (1959), a work very much of the avant-garde in its treatment of sonority and texture as primary structural elements. In the 1960s, however, Górecki's music offered harbingers of the eclecticism that would dominate contemporary music by the century's end. Genesis shows minimalist qualities, while Three Pieces in the Old Style manipulates modal and whole tone ideas, and Lerchenmusik quotes Beethoven, to name a few examples.
Górecki became interested in the folk music of his native region and investigated Polish music of the Medieval and Renaissance eras. In 1976 he synthesized the new trends in his music with the Symphony No. 3, subtitled "Symphony of Sorrowful Songs." Scored for soprano and orchestra, this hour-long piece contains three movements, quoting old religious and folk texts and incorporating folk tunes. It opens with a canon in the strings that builds gradually over a 12-minute span, with an effect comparable to that of Western minimalist composition but proceeding from different spiritual bases. (One of the animating principles of Górecki's work was a fervent Roman Catholicism.) The work was recorded several times, but it was the 1993 release that caught fire -- partly because it fit perfectly with the new and well-marketed trend toward "holy minimalism."
Despite his growing success, Górecki continued to compose largely in response to inner creative dictates rather than according to any plan to increase his reputation. Much of his work in the 1980s and 1990s has been in the choral and chamber genres; the String Quartet No. 1, Op. 62 ("Already It Is Dusk"), was written for the Kronos Quartet, a successful U.S. ensemble devoted to new music, and further enhanced his reputation. The work used a Renaissance part-song as raw material, transforming it first into a dissonant but peaceful chorale and then into a folk-inflected dance. At the time of his death, in November 2010, he had just completed his Symphony No. 4 and was awaiting its premiere.
The Prague Philharmonic Choir (in Czech Pražský filharmonický sbor) is an independent, self-governing chorus operating under the auspices of the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic. The choir has been associated with various orchestras over its nearly 90 years of existence, although not with the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra.
The Prague Philharmonic Choir was founded in 1935 by singer Jan Kühn as the Czech Choir. At first, it served the needs of what was then Czechoslovak Radio and sang with that network's Symphony Orchestra of Czechoslovak Radio. Both organizations were silenced by the German occupation during World War II, but the choir was re-formed in the postwar years and performed with various orchestras. Several performances were landmarks: the choir performed Dvorák's oratorio St. Ludmila in the courtyard of Prague Castle in 1948, and Arthur Honegger's King David under the composer's baton the following year. In 1953, the choir was attached by the Czechoslovak Culture Ministry to the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra. It took the name Prague Philharmonic Choir at about this time. Kühn remained the director until his death in 1958 and was replaced by Josef Veselka. The choir toured often in the 1960s and 1970s, not only in Eastern Europe. Veselka stepped down in 1981 and was replaced by his pupil, Lubomír Mátl.
With the end of Communist rule in 1990 and the subsequent separation of the Czech Republic from Slovakia, the Prague Philharmonic Choir was removed from its connection to the Czech Philharmonic and became independent under conductor Pavel Kühn (son of Jan). In the 1990s, the choir spawned the smaller Czech Chamber Choir, which has gone on to considerable renown on its own. Since 2007, Prague Philharmonic Choir's conductor has been Lukás Vasilek. In modern times, the choir has appeared often with orchestras in both eastern and western Europe and has expanded its activities into opera.
The choir's recording catalog dates back to a performance of the Dvorák Stabat Mater under Vaclav Talich in 1952. It has recorded for the Praga and Supraphon labels, but also for CPO, where it was heard with the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra in the world premiere recording of Max Bruch's opera Die Loreley on an album released in 2019. ~ James Manheim
The Czech Philharmonic is the leading symphonic ensemble in the musically rich Czech Republic, with a long history of definitive performances and recordings of Czech repertory. The orchestra has sometimes found itself a topic of political contention as the waves of European history have swept across its homeland.
Like many other Central European orchestras, the Czech Philharmonic (the Czech name since 2015 is Česká filharmonie, and the word "orchestra" is no longer part of its name) began as a theater orchestra: a group of orchestral musicians at the Prague National Theatre named themselves the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra in 1894, and in two years, the wisdom of the move became apparent when Dvořák conducted the group in a concert of his own works. By 1901, the Philharmonic was a fully independent entity, and it quickly gained renown beyond Czech borders; Mahler conducted the orchestra in the world premiere of his Symphony No. 7 in 1908. The most important among the orchestra's early conductors was Vaclav Talich, who held the post of principal conductor for most of the period between 1919 and 1941.
The orchestra's conductors since then have all been internationally renowned figures. Rafael Kubelik assumed the baton under German occupation in 1942, remaining until 1948 but fleeing at that point as Czechoslovakia came under Communist rule. His successors have included Karel Ancerl (who fled to Canada during the Soviet crackdown after the so-called Prague Spring of 1968), Václav Neumann, and Jiří Bělohlávek, all of whom were distinguished interpreters of Czech music, Mahler, and often French and 20th century music as well. Their recordings gained critical acclaim in the West despite Czechoslovakia's partial isolation during the Cold War. In the late '80s, the orchestra participated in Czech protests against Soviet domination. A performance of Smetana's Má vlast in 1990 marked Kubelik's return to his homeland for the first time in 42 years. Bělohlávek served from 1990 to 1992, stepping down as the orchestra appointed Gerd Albrecht to be its first non-Czech conductor. This move generated controversy, and Albrecht also resigned in 1996. He was succeeded by Vladimir Ashkenazy (1996-2003), who led the orchestra on major international tours. He was followed by Zdeněk Mácal and the Eliahu Inbal. Bělohlávek returned in 2012 and was essentially given a contract for life, making critically acclaimed recordings before his death in 2017. Since 2018, the orchestra's conductor has been Semyon Bychkov.
The Czech Philharmonic has recorded prolifically during the digital era, at first mostly for the Czech national label Supraphon. In the late 2010s, the group has also recorded for the Decca label, which has continued to issue Bělohlávek recordings in its vaults. In 2019, his reading of Josef Suk's Asrael Symphony appeared on that label. The Bychkov era began on Decca with The Tchaikovsky Project (2019), a complete cycle of the composer's symphonies, concertos, and other orchestral works. In 2022, Bychkov and the Philharmonic issued a pair of Mahler symphony releases on the PentaTone Classics label. By that time, the group's recording catalog comprised some 140 digital albums, plus many LPs issued when the Philharmonic was the national orchestra of Czechoslovakia. ~ James Manheim
Conductor John Nelson is noted as a specialist in choral-orchestral music, especially the works of Berlioz. He also built the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra from a part-time group into a major American ensemble.
Nelson was born on December 6, 1941, in San José, Costa Rica. His parents were American missionaries, and he grew up amid religious choral music. Nelson attended Wheaton College, a Christian institution in Illinois, and went on to the Juilliard School in New York, where he studied conducting with Jean Paul Morel and won the school's Irving Berlin Award. After finishing his schooling, he worked as a freelance conductor in New York, leading some of the satirical P.D.Q. Bach performances created by composer-humorist Peter Schickele, conducting the Greenwich Philharmonia and New Jersey Pro Arte and serving on the Metropolitan Opera conducting staff. In 1972, he conducted Bizet's Carmen at the New York City Opera. A concert performance of Berlioz's Les Troyens, the first in New York, led to an engagement to conduct the work at the Metropolitan Opera in 1973 as a last-minute replacement for the ailing Rafael Kubelik. Nelson conducted Britten's Owen Wingrave at the Santa Fe Opera in the work's U.S. premiere.
In 1976, Nelson became the conductor of the Indianapolis Symphony. He programmed new music by Ellen Taaffe Zwilich and Charles Martin Loeffler, improved the group's sound, transformed it into a 52-week-a-year ensemble, restarted its recording career (he recorded Zwilich's Symphony No. 1 with the group in 1986), and moved it into the Circle Theater in downtown Indianapolis. Nelson began a stint as the music director of the Caramoor Festival in Katonah, New York, in 1983 and as the music director of the Opera Theatre of St. Louis in 1985. Suffering health problems, Nelson relinquished these positions in the late '80s and early '90s and returned to freelancing, largely in Europe. In addition to major American orchestras, he has conducted the Dresden Staatskapelle, the Oslo Philharmonic, and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, among other major groups.
In 1998, he became the music director of the Ensemble Orchestral de Paris under a contract that called for 14 weeks of appearances a year. He led the group in a complete cycle of Beethoven symphonies released on the Ambroisie label in 2006. In 2008, he left the Ensemble Orchestral de Paris but has remained active as a guest conductor and recording artist; he also served as the artistic director of the choir Soli Deo Gloria. In 2019, he released a pair of acclaimed Berlioz recordings on the Erato label: the Requiem, Op. 5, with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir and the opera La Damnation de Faust. He returned in 2022 on Erato with a recording of Berlioz's song cycle Les Nuits d'été, Op. 7, and the viola concerto Harold en Italie, Op. 16. By that time, his recording catalog comprised more than 30 items. ~ James Manheim
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