Help
Skip to main content

Forgetten Czech Piano Concertos

Kovařovic - Kaprálová - Bořkovec

Marek Kozák (soloist, piano), Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, Robert Jindra

The soloist, Marek Kozák, is a superb advocate for these widely differing works, providing thoughtful and persuasively idiomatic interpretations. Robert Jindra and the Prague Radio Symphony,...

Forgetten Czech Piano Concertos

Kovařovic - Kaprálová - Bořkovec

Marek Kozák (soloist, piano), Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, Robert Jindra

Purchase product

CD

$20.50

4 available: usually despatched in 3 - 4 working days

Download

From$11.00

Download

Audio formats guide

48 kHz, 24 bit, FLAC/ALAC/WAV

$16.25

44.1 kHz, 16 bit, FLAC/ALAC/WAV

$13.50

320 kbps, MP3

$11.00

This release includes a digital booklet

Stream now Hi-Res 48 kHz, 24 bit
Fair Play.
We pay more royalties to artists and composers than any other streaming service with our innovative Fair Play pay-per-second model
We pay artists and composers fairly with our pay-per-second model
The soloist, Marek Kozák, is a superb advocate for these widely differing works, providing thoughtful and persuasively idiomatic interpretations. Robert Jindra and the Prague Radio Symphony,...

About

It would very much seem that the 19th- and 20th-century Czech piano concerto repertoire begins and ends with Dvorak and Martinu. The present recording, however, serves to prove that this is far from being the case. It contains three piano concertos that have been - undeservedly - overlooked. Vitezslava Kapralova wrote the Piano Concerto in D minor, characterised by brilliant instrumentation and an engrossing solo part, at the age of 20 as her graduation work. The premiere, which she herself conducted, met with great critical acclaim. In 1937, the young composer moved to Paris to study with Bohuslav Martinu. Just a year later, Kapralova was lauded at the International Society for Contemporary Music festival in London, which she opened conducting the BBC Orchestra performing her Military Sinfonietta. In 1940, when she was just 25, the gifted artist's life and career were sadly terminated by a serious illness. At that very age, Karel Kovarovic created his one and only piano concerto. A pupil of Zdenek Fibich, he would later on primarily gain recognition as a conductor and serve as director of Prague's National Theatre Opera (1900-1920). Kovarovic'sPiano Concerto in F minor affords the soloists great scope to display their virtuosity. Pavel Borkovec, a pupil of J. B. Foerster and Josef Suk, wrote his Piano Concerto No. 2 after World War II. At the time a mature artist, as a teacher he cultivated a new generation of major Czech composers (Petr Eben, Jan Novak, Vladimir Sommer, etc.). The main protagonist of the present album, the pianist Marek Kozak, who has garnered accolades at a number of competitions (Zurich, Bolzano, Bremen, Prague, and elsewhere), has a penchant for exploring little-known and forgotten landscapes, as attested to by this revelatory recording.

Contents and tracklist

I. Allegro affettuoso
Track length15:52
II. Larghetto
Track length7:19
III. Vivace. Scherzando
Track length8:43
I. Allegro entusiastico
Track length10:10
II. Largo
Track length3:32
III. Allegro
Track length8:48
I. Agitato
Track length6:55
II. Poco lento
Track length7:25
III. Vivace
Track length6:40

Awards and reviews

May 2024

The soloist, Marek Kozák, is a superb advocate for these widely differing works, providing thoughtful and persuasively idiomatic interpretations. Robert Jindra and the Prague Radio Symphony, somewhat more distantly recorded than the soloist, supply dependable if occasionally slightly untidy accompaniment.

14/04/2024

Kovarovic’s work has a high Romantic sweep, foregrounding the soloist with passages of infectious brio. Kapralova’s written as her graduation piece, peers into the future with wonderfully reckless keyboard runs…Borkovec’s second piano concerto, full of colour and activity, bears traces of Bartok and Shostakovich. This beautifully played and recorded disc has an inescapable poignancy to it; a time capsule of periods in history where the sun shone before obscurity beckoned.
View download progress