R2 / Kateřina Kněžíková in songs • Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra

The Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra’s principal guest conductor, Robert Jindra, specialises in vocal music and is a keen connoisseur of French music, which is why he has chosen an original programme of three works largely unknown to Czech audiences. Soprano Kateřina Kněžíková will present Mélodies by Henri Duparc, a composer influenced by César Franck, Richard Wagner and Claude Debussy, who wrote a surprisingly small number of works, mainly melodies with an outlook on the turn of the century. She has a close relationship with them, having recorded them with Robert Jindra along with works by Ravel and Martinů, and having chosen the simple and pious peasant Phidylé, the heroine of one of them, as the title of the whole album. Manon, Werther and the oriental Thaïs are among the most famous operas by the French Romantic composer and teacher at the Paris Conservatoire Jules Massenet, a contemporary of Antonín Dvořák, Edvard Grieg and Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Since the late 1850s, however, he has managed to write more than forty operas. Most, however, have been forgotten, rightly or wrongly. A similar fate befell his symphonic poem Visions, which captures dreams of happy old times. Like Massenet, Georges Bizet won the Prix de Rome at the Paris Conservatoire, which guaranteed him a place at the French Academy at the Villa Medici in Rome. He continued to compose the symphony / symphonic suite Roma for many decades until his untimely death in 1875.