Czech Chamber Music Society • Martinů Voices

Martinů Voices chamber choir was founded in 2010. While its main artistic focus has been on top-quality interpretation of chamber choral works encompassing the time span from the 19^th to 21^st centuries, the choirʼs repertoire also includes compositions from the Renaissance, Baroque and Classical periods. The ensemble is made up of professional singers working under the direction of conductor Lukáš Vasilek.

The choir appear regularly at the Czech Republicʼs major music festivals. Apart from its own concert programmes, the choir has likewise been involved in a number of joint projects. In 2014 it joined the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra and Jiří Bělohlávek, in a production of Bohuslav Martinůʼs opera What Men Live By. This particular collaboration earned them a nomination for the prestigious International Opera Award (2015). Another major achievement for the choir was their concert appearance alongside the prominent British ensemble, the Tallis Scholars, at the Dvořák Prague Festival in 2016.

The art of the choir has been documented by several CD albums; the most important of them, which includes a selection of choral works by Jan Novák, was published in 2014 by Supraphon. In 2016 the choir made a recording of Jakub Jan Rybaʼs cantata Stabat Mater (Nibiru Publishers) which earned it the “Diapason dʼOr choice” (April 2017).

Lukáš Vasilek studied conducting and musicology. Since 2007 he has been the chief choirmaster of the Prague Philharmonic Choir. Most of his artistic activity with the choir involves rehearsing and performing a cappella repertoire along with preparing the choir to perform in large-scale cantata, oratorio, and opera projects in collaboration with world-famous conductors and orchestras (Berlin Philharmonic, Czech Philharmonic, Israel Philharmonic, Saint Petersburg Philharmonic etc.).

Besides his work with the Prague Philharmonic Choir, he also engages in other performing activities mainly in cooperation with the Martinů Voices, which he founded in 2010. He is credited as a conductor or choirmaster on a large number of Prague Philharmonic Choir recordings made for important international labels (Decca Classics, Supraphon). In recent years, he has been devoting himself systematically to recording the choral music of Bohuslav Martinů. His recordings have won exceptional acclaim abroad, earning honours including awards from the prestigious journals Gramophone, BBC Music Magazine, and Diapason. Vasilek has been teaching conducting at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague since 2021.

Kateřina Englichová, winner of a Prague Classic Award, is a performer of renown all around Europe. She works with important artists and ensembles in this country and abroad, and she is invited to sit on juries at international competitions (including the Israel Harp Competition, the world’s most prestigious competition for harpists).

She studied at the Prague Conservatoire and the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia; in the summer of 2017 she completed her post-graduate studies at the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler in Berlin. She is now the professor of harp at the Prague Conservatoire and leads masterclasses in this country and abroad (USA, Canada, UK, Hong Kong etc.).

She also devotes herself to contemporary music and has premiered a number of works, including some written for her. She has recorded more than 40 CDs (including the Ceremony of Carols by B. Britten with the Kühn Children’s Choir and Jiří Chvála). Last year she recorded three “Covid” CDs; she will be celebrating the release of the first of them with the soprano Kateřina Kněžíková at the festival Smetana’s Litomyšl in June 2022.

Daniela Valtová Kosinová is a graduate of the Pardubice Conservatoire and of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. She won third prize and the title of laureate at the International Organ Competition in Brno in 2002. She is the principal organist of the Prague Symphony Orchestra. She gives concerts all around Europe. In the Czech Republic she is a guest at leading music festivals (Prague Spring, Smetana’s Litomyšl, Janáček May Festival etc.), and she collaborates with important soloists and ensembles.

She has performed the organ solos in Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass many times with the Prague Symphony Orchestra, in 2015 with the Czech Philharmonic and Jiří Bělohlávek at Vienna’s Musikverein, in 2018 with the Flemish Symphony Orchestra on a tour of Belgium, and this year with the Czech Philharmonic in Prague and on a European tour (Vienna, Hamburg, London). With the mezzo-soprano Jarmila Kosinová and the actor Jan Potměšil she created the concert programme Music Between the Words, which has been presented successfully all over the Czech Republic.

She also composes, and her works have been played at many concerts in this country and abroad. In 2010 she issued the jazz album Meeting Point featuring her own music.