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When buying tickets in a package, i.e. to all four concerts of the series On the Trail of Antonín Dvořák, you pay CZK 500. The price is adjusted automatically when you put all of the tickets into your shopping cart. The number of packages is limited by the capacity of the concert halls.
With this concert at the home of the Hlahol Singing Society in Prague, we are commemorating the unusually important role this ensemble played in Antonín Dvořák’s artistic career. This was the choir that gave the stirring performance of Dvořák’s Hymn “The Heirs of the White Mountain” in 1873, contributing to the still nearly unknown composer’s first great success. Kühn Choir of Prague will be performing this Dvořák´s music at the concert. The dramaturgically revelatory programme will include three cycles of men’s choruses that are not performed very often, and this time they will be receiving their first performances in Dvořák’s authentic version. The concert is part of the traditional festival event On the Trail of Antonín Dvořák, which will take us this year to several places in Prague that are associated with the composer’s activities.
Jaroslav Brych studied French horn at the Pardubice Conservatory and conducting at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague under Václav Neumann, Josef Veselka, and Radomil Eliška. He participated repeatedly at Helmuth Rilling’s conducting courses in Stuttgart. From 1984 to 1997 he was the choirmaster of the Charles University Choir, and from 1996 to 2005 he served as the chief choirmaster of the Prague Philharmonic Choir. Besides his activities as a conductor and choirmaster, he also teaches at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, the Jaroslav Ježek Conservatory in Prague, and the Pardubice Conservatory. He has been the choirmaster of the Kühn Choir of Prague since 2017.
The Kühn Choir of Prague has been active in the music world for nearly sixty years. Under the leadership of Pavel Kühn, it has focused on the performing of a cappella works of the Romantic era from around the world, and under the guidance of conductors including Václav Smetáček, Zdeněk Mácal, Jiří Bělohlávek, and Libor Pešek, it has also performed the oratorio and cantata repertoire. Among the ensemble’s other activities have been the making of recordings of music from films and operas. The choir inspired works by many composers of the latter half of the twentieth century, including Bohuslav Martinů, Jan Novák, Václav Trojan, and Luboš Fišer. It has collaborated with a number of renowned Czech and foreign orchestras and presents a series of its own concerts at the Czech Museum of Music.
Lenka Navrátilová studied piano under Prof. Jaroslav Čermák and harpsichord under Prof. Rudolf Zelenka at the Teplice Conservatoire and choral conducting of sacred music under Prof. Jiří Kolář and Prof. Marek Štryncl at Charles University. She is a professor of opera coaching at the Prague Conservatoire, and she is an accompanist and rehearsal pianist of the Prague Philharmonic Choir. She has engaged in long-term cooperation with the Prague Chamber Choir and the Czech National Symphony Orchestra Mixed Choir, and she is a choirmaster of the Kühn Choir of Prague. She has conducted concerts with the choir at the Dvořák Prague Festival, Musica Holešov, and the Saint Wenceslas Festival. As a choirmaster, she has taken part in concerts of the Czech Philharmonic, the Prague Symphony Orchestra, the Berg Orchestra, the Antonín Dvořák Music Festival in Příbram, Film Music Prague, the Prague Proms, and concerts produced and presented by Radio Classic. She has also rehearsed the choir for opera productions at the National Theatre. On programmes of the concert series of the Kühn Choir of Prague, she has given several world premieres of choral works. As the assistant choirmaster of the Prague Philharmonic Choir, she has appeared on concert tours in Doha and Berlin and at the opera festival in St. Gallen.
‘Hlahol’, a Czech word meaning ‘a joyful noise’, is a choral ensemble which in Dvořák’s time was probably the best large choir in Prague. In 1903 it launched construction of its own building, a fine example of art nouveau style, on the bank of the Vltava just upstream from the National Theatre. It was completed in 1905 after Dvořák had died, but he is likely to have visited the building while work was underway: apart from his life-long close connection with Hlahol via works of his the ensemble performed, we may mention that its choirmaster at the time of construction of the new building was his former pupil Adolf Piskáček.