Prague Wind

World premiere recordings, reviving the individual voice and fine craftsmanship of a forgotten English-Czech composer writing in the middle of the last century.

Florent Schmitt A website and blog that celebrates the highly individualistic music of the fascinating French composer Florent Schmitt (1870-1958) — as well as the scholars and musicians who study and perform his works.

World premiere recordings, reviving the individual voice and fine craftsmanship of a forgotten English-Czech composer writing in the middle of the last century.Born in London in 1917, Geraldine Mucha learnt to read music before words; her Scottish father, Marcus Thomson, taught at the Royal Academy of Music. Having turned 18 she became a student there herself, and at a party in 1941 she met her future husband, Jan Mucha, an exiled Czech war correspondent and son of the artist Alphonse Mucha. They settled in his home city of Prague at the end of the war, but Geraldine fled the Communist regime for Scotland after the invasion of Prague in 1968, and returned only after the fall of Communism in 1989. Jiří died in 1991 but Geraldine lived on until 2012, leaving a fair-sized body of instrumental music which had been performed throughout her lifetime but is only now being rediscovered.

Conductor Vaclav Smetácek may not be as well known as his contemporaries Rafael Kubelik or Vaclav Neumann, but he was one of the most conspicuous influential Czech musicians of the twentieth century. Born in Brno, Smetácek was an oboe player and founded the Prague Wind Quintet in 1928 and maintained his membership in that renowned chamber group until his retirement in 1955.

Conductor Vaclav Smetácek may not be as well known as his contemporaries Rafael Kubelik or Vaclav Neumann, but he was one of the most conspicuous influential Czech musicians of the twentieth century. Born in Brno, Smetácek was an oboe player and founded the Prague Wind Quintet in 1928 and maintained his membership in that renowned chamber group until his retirement in 1955. His conducting career began in radio in 1933, leading what would become the Prague Symphony Orchestra in a number of radio concerts and in the making of soundtracks for motion pictures. In 1942, the Prague Radio Symphony moved into the position of being a full-fledged civic orchestra, and Smetácek was named its first conductor; he held onto this position until 1972. Afterward, he frequently appeared as a guest conductor until shortly before his death at age 79 in 1986. Smetácek was a very prolific recording artist and an expert in Czech music of all kinds, but he also recorded Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, and many others, as well, most of it very skillfully and all of it for the Czech state labels Supraphon and Panton.

Kevin Michael Holzman serves as the Director of Wind Studies at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. Holzman joined CCM’s faculty on a visiting basis in 2017 as the Assistant Director of Wind Studies, and assumed the Director of Wind Studies position in August 2018. As Director of Wind Studies, Holzman serves as the music director for the CCM Wind Symphony (CCM’s premier large wind ensemble), the CCM Chamber Orchestra, the CCM Chamber Winds, and the CCM Bras Choir. His academic responsibilities include teaching graduate conducting, survey of wind literature and related courses as well as the advising and mentoring of wind conducting students in CCM’s MM and DMA programs.

Conductor Shea Lolin and composer/producer Christopher Hussey have returned to Prague to record with the Czech Philharmonic Wind Ensemble, carefully curating an album of premiere recordings spotlighting the woodwind orchestra, capturing its kaleidoscopic colours and symphonic potential in order to deepen and broaden appreciation of the medium’s power.

This Austrian composer and child prodigy was a major figure in the classical period who wrote in most musical forms of the time, especially opera, symphony, concertos, and chamber music; his notable works are too numerous to mention. Mozart had a great and lively mind, which he engaged in such experiments as deciding progressions by playing dice and billiards, placing players in adjacent rooms echoing each other (Notturno for Four Orchestras, K. 269), and the encoding of Masonic rituals in The Magic Flute.