Czech Philharmonic • New Year’s Concerts

Maurice Ravel (1875‒1937), a French composer with Basque roots, played the piano from the age of four, but he made progress as a composer only gradually. The piano cycle Miroirs (Mirrors, 1904‒1905) clearly embraced the new Impressionist movement and became a resounding success. Ravel created more colourful orchestral versions of two movements from the cycle: A Boat on the Ocean and Morning Song of a Jester, better known by its Spanish title Alborada del grazioso. Alborada (from the Spanish word albor meaning ‘dawn’) is a kind of shepherd’s folksong celebrating daybreak and the rising sun, a distant cousin of the French aubade, a morning love song. The word “grazioso” has its roots in Spanish comedy and means a brilliant jester, a grotesque lover, or a witty prankster. Above all, Ravel’s Alborada is a Spanish genre piece full of life, fiery temperament, and energetic motion, and its melodies and rhythms are linked to the music of Iberian folk dances. Ravel created the orchestral arrangement at the suggestion of the legendary impresario Sergei Diaghilev for the composite production Les Jardins dʼAranjuez, which consisted of music by various composers for the 1919/1920 season of the Ballets Russes in London.

Paul Dukas (1865‒1935) was a Frenchman ten years older than Ravel. After studying at the Paris Conservatory and failing in the competition for the Prix de Rome, he entered musical life as a member of a group of traditionalists who were fostering the legacy of their teacher, César Franck. Engaging in friendly conversation with Claude Debussy, he arrived at the realisation that he needed to free himself from the ideas of Romanticism in order to reach the modern listener. Despite his efforts in that direction, Dukas remained somehow at the border between the past and the future. He composed barely twenty works, amongst which the brilliantly fanciful opus Lʼapprenti sorcier (The Sorcerer’s Apprentice) is by far the best known. In 1906, he composed his brief but brilliant Villanelle for French horn and piano as a contest piece (morceau de concours) for the final examinations of horn players at the Paris Conservatoire. An orchestral version appeared later. The title is derived from the Italian word villanelle, a rustic farmer’s song or “song for the outdoors” popular in the 16th and early 17th centuries. Dukas’s composition retains something of the pastoral atmosphere of carefree happiness. Villanelle begins with a lyrical fanfare evoking the sound of the natural horn, but the technical passages that follow require the valves of the modern horn to allow for chromaticism and technical fluidity.

The great French Impressionist composer Claude Debussy (1862‒1918) reacted successfully to the Impressionist movement in painting twenty years later. He wrote many short piano pieces that hold a permanent place in the concert repertoire including the four-movement Suite bergamasque. The popular third movement Clair de lune (Moonlight) has become one of the most famous pieces in all of music history. Debussy borrowed the title from a poem by Paul Verlaine. The orchestration of Clair de lune is not by Debussy, however, but by his friend André Caplet (1878‒1925), who also created beautiful orchestrations of other music by Debussy: The Children’s Corner and Pagodas. Clair de lune stands out for its peculiarly dreamy, even mystical atmosphere.

Gabriel’s Oboe, the famous solo from Roland Joffé’s film The Mission (1986), is a masterpiece by Ennio Morricone (1928‒2020), a giant of film music. The story is set in the mid-18th century against the backdrop of the conflict between Spain and Portugal over domination of South America. Father Gabriel, a Spanish Jesuit played masterfully by Jeremy Irons, is sent into the jungle of Paraguay to convert members of the native Guaraní tribe to Christianity. Not knowing the language, he tries to establish contact with them by playing the oboe. The chief, who alone has any idea of the consequences of the foreigners’ arrival, breaks his oboe and sends him off to be killed, but the other natives, fascinated by the music, choose to let him live among them. Father Gabriel builds a thriving Catholic mission, and the natives sincerely accept the new faith. All is well until 1750, when Spain and Portugal sign a treaty on the redistribution of spheres of influence. The Portuguese bring new plans for modern slavery and a categorical command for abolition of the mission. This can only end tragically; the mission defends itself, but everything is destroyed, the heroes dies, and a handful of natives flee back to the jungle. The question as to whether they would have been better off having never encountered European culture at all remains unanswered. Morricone masterfully highlights the film’s breathtaking visuals with shots of the wilderness and of the thundering Iguaçu Falls.

Danzón No. 2 by the Mexican composer Artur Márquez (*1950) is one of the most popular and most frequently performed Mexican contemporary compositions. It is celebrated as a symbol of Mexican culture and is regarded as a second, unofficial national anthem. Danzón is an old salon dance style of Cuban origin, which came to the dance halls of Mexico City by way of the port city Veracruz. It combines lightness with dignity as well as passionate sensuality. Márquez’s Danzón No. 2 (1994) gained worldwide popularity when the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela led by Gustav Dudamel included it on programmes on their 2007 European and American tour.

The German trumpet player Oskar Böhme (1870‒1938) graduated from trumpet and composition studies at the conservatoire in Leipzig. At the age of 27 he moved to Tsarist Russia, where he played cornet in the orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg until the Bolshevik Revolution, then he taught trumpet playing at the Central Academy of Music. In 1936, he was exiled to faraway Orenburg during Stalin’s Great Purge, then he was arrested two years later, sentenced to death in a show trial, and executed by members of the NKVD as one of the last victims of that wave of terror. His compositions, mostly in this spirit of Romanticism, are devoted to the trumpet, including the very brilliant Tarantella “La Napolitaine”, Op. 25. The lively scherzo evokes the familiar Italian folk dance in 6/8 time; the dance’s origins are tied to a myth about tarantula bites, for which dancing was said to be a cure! The Leipzig publisher Zimmermann issued the first printed edition of the piece in 1903.

Pietro Mascagni (1863‒1945) is best known for his one-act opera Cavalleria rusticana (1890), the first of his 15 operatic works. From its premiere at Rome’s Teatro Costanzi, it was clear that the naturalistic storytelling and the setting in the Sicilian countryside were reflections of the new operatic trend known as verismo, with its characteristic search for truthful realism (the Italian word verità means ‘truth’). The lovely Intermezzo sinfonico from the opera lives a life of its own, thriving on the concert stage.

Candide, the third Broadway musical by Leonard Bernstein (1918‒1990) after West Side Story and Peter Pan, was premiered on 1 December 1956. The show closed after a run of just 73 performances, a failure by Broadway’s standards. Supposedly at fault was Lillian Hellmann’s libretto, which was unable to capture fully the satirical double entendres and caustic irony of Voltaire’s original. There followed decades of revisions and the emergence of an operatic version, for which Bernstein created new numbers. However, the work’s revisions were hindered by a dispute with the librettist, who disallowed changes to the text for the new versions. Therefore, for the final version of Candide, Richard Wilbur furnished a new libretto with contributions by Broadway legend Stephen Sondheim.

Unlike the musical, Bernstein’s overture to Candide enjoyed immediate popularity, and at the turn of the century it was one of the most frequently played contemporary works on a worldwide scale. The piece begins with a comedic fanfare based on the interval of the minor seventh followed by a major second, a kind of motto for Candide as a whole. This is followed by a flurry of musical motifs, interspersed with the contrasting lyrical secondary theme of the duet “Oh, Happy We.” The entire section is repeated with different orchestration, and the overture concludes with a brilliant coda derived from the ending of the aria “Glitter and Be Gay”.

When Leonard Bernstein died in 1990, the New York Philharmonic played the overture to Candide without a conductor at a memorial concert for their conductor laureate. That performance practice has become a tradition maintained to this day.

Barbora Trnčíková (*1995) has been dedicated to playing the recorder and piano since childhood. She began studying the oboe with Pavel Tylšar at the Jan Neruda Grammar School. After completing secondary education, she continued her studies at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (HAMU) under the guidance of Liběna Séquardtová, where she is currently a doctoral scholarship holder.

During her studies, she spent a year on exchange at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Lyon, France, and at the Royal College of Music in London. She won first prize and the overall winner’s title at the Pro Bohemia Ostrava 2016 competition, as well as at the international competition in Chieri, Italy (2013), among others. She has been a member of the prestigious Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester and the European Union Youth Orchestra (EUYO).

As a soloist, she has performed with the Prague Symphony Orchestra FOK, PKF – Prague Philharmonia, and the Brno Philharmonic. She completed the scholarship program of the Academy of Chamber Music and was included on the Young Artists’ List of the Czech Music Fund Foundation. She is a founding member of the chamber ensembles Slavic Trio and Alinde Quintet; the latter was this year’s laureate of the Carl Nielsen International Chamber Music Competition in Copenhagen.

After completing orchestral academies with the PKF – Prague Philharmonia and the Czech Philharmonic, she joined the oboe section of the National Theatre Orchestra in Prague. Since 2020, she has served as Principal Oboist of the Brno Philharmonic.

Started to play the french horn at age of nine with Tomáš Krejbich. She graduated at the Prague Conservatory in the class of prof. Bedřich Tylšar in 2012. At present time she is a student at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague with professors Zdeněk Divoký and Radek Baborák. 

Kateřina has already earned reputation and prizes on prestigious international competitions. On the International Brass Competition in Brno she won the 1st prize repeatedly in 2005, 2009 and 2011. She was awarded the 1st prize on the international competition “Federico II di Svevia” in 2009. On the international french horn competition held as a part of the Festival “Moravian Autumn” she earned the title of “absolute winner”. 

She appeared as soloist with the Prague Philharmonia and the Prague Symphony Chamber Orchestra. She cooperates with leading Czech orchestras and ensembles, as the Czech Philharmonic, Prague Symphony Orchestra, Prague Chamber Orchestra or the Baborák Ensemble. From 2009 she is a regular member of the Prague Philharmonia. Kateřina Javůrková has been recently awarded  1st prize and the title of laureate of the  prestigious Prague Spring International Music Competition 2013.

One of the most prominent Czech trumpeters, Walter Hofbauer, was born in Jihlava into a musical family. He initially began playing the piano, but later decided to switch to the trumpet, which he studied at the Prague Conservatory under Jiří Jaroňek. He completed his studies at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (HAMU) with a master’s degree in 2021. Even as a student, he excelled in many domestic and international competitions, such as Concertino Praga, the International Interpretative Competition for Wind Instruments in Brno, the Competition of Conservatories and Music High Schools of the Czech Republic, and the New Talent Competition. One of his most recent achievements is winning several awards at the 2021 Bohuslav Martinů Foundation Competition, specifically 1st place in the wind instruments category, the Bohuslav Martinů Prize for the best interpretation of a composition by this composer, and the Přemysl Pražák Prize for the most successful participant in the competition.

As a member of the Prague Conservatory Orchestra and its principal trumpeter, he was invited by Jiří Bělohlávek to perform as a guest at the opening concert of the Prague Spring festival, which led to further collaboration when, together with the Prague Philharmonia, they performed Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto in E flat major. As a soloist, he has also performed with the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Pilsen Philharmonic, the South Czech Philharmonic, the Prague Symphony Orchestra, and other ensembles. He recently gave a solo performance accompanied by the Czech Philharmonic during New Year’s concerts, performing Oskar Böhme’s Tarantella “La Napolitaine”.

From 2014 to 2021, he was a permanent member of the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, and from the 2017/2018 season through 2024, he has been a member of the National Theater Orchestra. Currently, he can be seen and heard primarily as a permanent member of the Czech Philharmonic, where he first graduated from the Orchestral Academy and is now the principal trumpeter. Orchestral performance is his main specialization; he is a highly sought-after symphonic and studio musician in orchestras throughout the Czech Republic and abroad. He personally fondly recalls, for example, a concert at Carnegie Hall in New York, where he was part of a performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 5, which is a major challenge for trumpeters.

In addition to orchestral performances, he is also a chamber musician—he is a member of the PBtet (Prague Brass Quintet), with whom he won the Jeju International Brass & Percussion Competition in South Korea in 2019. They also received awards at the Bucharest International Music Competition 2021 and the International Music Competition OPUS 2022. In 2020, they recorded their debut album JOY and are currently working on another CD featuring compositions by Czech contemporary composers.

Walter Hofbauer is also active as a teacher—he currently has several students at the Prague Conservatory.

Robert Kružík is currently the chief conductor of the Bohuslav Martinů Philharmonic in Zlín, a regular guest conductor of the Brno Philharmonic, and from the 2025/2026 season the chief conductor of the Janáček Opera of the National Theatre in Brno, and he belongs to the youngest generation of Czech conductors. However, he got his start as a cellist. “When my family found out that I had a good sense of rhythm and a good ear, they sat me down at the piano, then by the time I turned six, Professor Havlík was teaching me to play the cello. Then at the conservatoire, I simultaneously began to discover the magic of the baton”, recalls the laurate of the Jiří Bělohlávek Prize about his musical beginnings. A graduate of the Brno Conservatoire, he studied cello under Miroslav Zicha and conducting under Stanislav Kummer, then he continued his studies at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, where his conducting teachers were Leoš Svárovský, Charles Olivieri-Munroe, and Lubomír Mátl and his cello teacher was Miroslav Petráš. In the 2012/2013 academic year, he went on a study visit to the Zürcher Hochschule der Künste in Switzerland, where he also pursued both playing and conducting, which he sees as having been very beneficial for his professional career: “It was a great advantage for me to have learned what it’s like to be on the other side of the baton. For example, as a conductor I now have greater empathy towards the players.”

While he is taking the helm of Brno’s Janáček Opera for the 2025/2026 season, his collaboration with the company had already begun during his studied, and it continued thereafter. “As a fresh graduate of the academy, I was incredibly lucky to be able to land on my feet getting professional experience, but it was like taking the wheel of a limousine right after having gotten a driver’s license”, admits the conductor who led many productions there, rehearsing and performing works including Rossini’s opera Le comte Ory, Tchaikovsky’s Pique Dame and Eugene Onegin, Smetana’s Libuše, which was played for the 100th anniversary of the founding of Czechoslovakia, Der Rosenkavalier by Richard Strauss, The Greek Passion by Bohuslava Martinů, and Verdi’s Otello. However, he still continues to conduct not only opera, but also symphonic music. “Symphonic music naturally has its own special splendour. But I’m quite happy that I still haven’t fully chosen which path to devote myself to more. I’m not easy to categorise. So I’m standing between those two wonderful worlds”, said Robert Kružík in an interview for the magazine Harmonie in 2023.

Besides his work already mentioned with opera companies and symphony orchestras, Robert Kružík has been serving for several seasons as the conductor of the National Moravian-Silesian Theatre in Ostrava, and he is working with orchestras including the Czech Philharmonic, the MDR Radio Symphony Orchestra in Leipzig, the National Philharmonic in Warsaw, the Prague Philharmonia, and the Prague Symphony Orchestra. He also receives invitations to important festivals such as Prague Spring, Smetana’s Litomyšl, the Saint Wenceslas Music Festival, and Festival Eufonia.

Although his conducting career continues to develop, he is still devoting himself to the cello. He has been a successful participant at such cello competitions as Prague Spring, the Bohuslav Martinů Foundation Competition, and the Leoš Janáček International Competition in Brno, and he has perfected his playing at several masterclasses led by the cellists Jiří Bárta, Michaela Fukačová, and Raphael Wallfisch. He has also been a participant at conducting masterclasses under Norbert Baxa, Johannes Schlaefli, and David Zinman.

Marek Eben is perhaps best known as a television presenter. He serves as the host of the popular StarDance competition and has been one of the key figures of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival since 1996. A graduate of the Music and Drama Department at the Prague Conservatoire, Eben is also an accomplished musician.
The son of the late organist and composer Petr Eben, he continues his father’s artistic legacy in his own distinctive way as the sole songwriter for The Eben Brothers, a band that released its sixth album, Co my víme, at the start of the 2023/2024 academic year.
Eben’s work as a composer extends beyond his own ensemble. He has written music for the films Bizon and Hele on letí, as well as for the television series Poste restante. He has also composed music and lyrics for around twenty stage productions, including Othello at Studio Ypsilon and A Winter’s Tale at the National Theatre.
On Czech Television, in addition to StarDance, Eben has appeared in the quiz show The Treasure of Agnes of Bohemia, and his long-running talk show Na plovárně has become a beloved classic. He has twice been the overall winner of the TýTý Award, formerly presented to the most popular television personalities.