Talich chamber orchestra Prague
Festival Prague Spring 2005

Viennese Spirit

The Talich Chamber Orchestra, conducted on May 22 by Jan Talich, provided ample proof that one can tell the quality of festivals not by their guest stars alone, but also by the level of their "standard concerts". The soloist, Swiss trumpetist Giuliano Sommerhalder, winner of the Concertino Praga and Prague Spring (2003) contests, presented himself as a supreme musician who shuns blendership and is right on the stylistic mark. The performances of both the introductory Concerto No. 2 in C major for trumpet and – especially – the Concerto in E flat major by Jan Krtitel Neruda were delightful in their balanced timbre and technical accuracy, especially in the higher registers. An intriguing dramaturgical rarity was the Czech premiere of Arnold Schönberg's Waltzes for String Orchestra. It is one of the earliest works of the composer, similar to his first string quartet which sounds like rather uninspired Dvorak... With the hindsight of the composer's further development, this set of ten short, rhythmically interestingly varied waltzes provides a similar surprise. They do not lack the light tone of serenades, nor an infusion of Viennese spirit – but the choppiness and terseness of some passages give a glimpse of the future innovator. The unambiguous highlight of this concert was Beethoven's First Symphony. It was rendered by the conductor Jan Talich in an imaginative and very sanguine manner. In terms of effect, the performance was comparable to that of a large orchestra – and in terms of attention to detail and proper style, it was definitely superior.

Music Magazin – Harmonia, 7/2005 Jindrich Balek

[Different Faces of Czech Interpretative Mastery]
The Talich Chamber Orchestra

Three Czech chamber orchestras that attracted so many concert-goers during the Prague Spring festival as to leave not a single seat unsold showed three different faces of the interpretative mastery of Czech musicians.
On May 22, the Talich Chamber Orchestra appeared in the Dvorak Hall, conducted by its founder and impresario Jan Talich. The evening's soloist was a recent (2003) winner of the Prague Spring contest, the trumpetist Giuliano Sommerhalder, who has turned twenty this year. In terms of technique, he is an exceptionally gifted instrumentalist. While he still somewhat lacks depth of expression and intuition, there can be no doubt that these will eventually materialize, given his disposition. Overall, the introductory Concerto in C major by Michael Haydn came across somewhat circumspect. The soloist obviously felt much more at home in the introduction to the second half of the evening, in the Concerto in E flat major by Jan Jiri Krtitel Neruda. We need not speculate, in the case of a performer who has been showered with prizes and has the technical wherewithal, whether the initial uncertainty might have been due to the fact that he played Haydn on the baroque trumpet.
The orchestra accompanied the soloist with certitude and refined sonority. During the concert's first half, we also heard the Waltzes for String Orchestra by Arnold Schönberg. This composition from Schönberg's youth (apparently from 1897) has only recently been rediscovered and had its premiere in 2004 in Solnohrad. It is a very peculiar cycle of ten not overly long waltzes that, while tipping their hat to various influences (Brahms, Dvorak, Johann Strauss) in the details, on the whole give almost the impression of a personal style, if certainly not that of Schönberg in the terms of his further development as a composer. Transfigured Night from 1899 really was the true turning point in this respect. In the case at hand, the orchestra's – and the conductor's – skill to attune their general timbre and intonation to the individual composition's style were prominent, and the Czech premiere thus took a distinguished course.
The concert closed with an excellent performance of Beethoven's First Symphony. The conductor chose relatively brisk tempi and underscored this composition's hallmark 'enlightenment' character by appropriate dynamic differentiations.

Music magazine – Hudební rozhledy, 7/2005, Mr. Petr Pokorny

First Performance of the Talich Chamber Orchestra in the New Year

The second festive New Year's concert in the Spanish Hall of Prague Castle, attended by the president of the republic, certainly had the requisite festive, but at the same time also a pleasantly relaxed character, resting on the performing Talich Chamber Orchestra's hallmark mastery of interpretation, with its indisputable technical and expressive value.
The festive evening opened with one of the "childhood symphonies" of young Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, which have in recent years aroused new and deserved interest by performers of chamber music and their audiences. The one we heard had distinct polyphonic elements, underscored by tasteful joviality, against a background of prevailing elegance and secure intonation.
This was followed by Jules Massenet's well-known Meditation, as a violin solo rendered by the chamber orchestra's impresario Jan Talich (1967). The popular evergreen was a welcome opportunity for the soloist to indulge in, and show his sense for, a broad cantilena, owing in particular to his confident bowing and unerring intonation. – A cute Sonatina by Niccolo Paganini, likewise a light and casual composition with sensational virtuoso effects, allowed the soloist to also present his agile and secure left-hand technique. As in the previous piece, accompaniment was entrusted to the harp (whereas Paganini had originally written for an accompanying guitar); the technically unfailing Jana Bouskova managed to conjure up enchanting accents in terms of dynamics and timbre from Paganini's plain stylization. The audience also much appreciated the Introduction and Allegro by Maurice Ravel for harp, flute, clarinet, and strings, which fit well into the evening's general atmosphere, with its melancholic touch, whiff of sentimentality, and romantic spirit. The winds were well attuned and together with the harp and the plenum of strings formed an organic whole in terms of rhythm and phrasing.
The Serenade for Strings by the then merely eighteen-year old Josef Suk, which may without exaggeration be considered a composition of "perennial youth", further underscored, and at the same time topped off, the discreetly festive character of the concert. The Talich Chamber Orchestra played this piece with the requisite noblesse and temperament and technical certitude, including many shades and peculiarities of expression; for this piece, it was conducted by the composer's grandson, the renowned violinist and violist – and occasional conductor – Josef Suk.
Suk's role, guiding the otherwise superbly prepared ensemble, was in one way merely symbolic, and yet in another went beyond a mere gesture. In any case, it is true that especially in those sections and individual expanses loaded with particular relevance and tension, the young musicians closely observed and respected Suk. Suk's Serenade, which in a welcome way balanced the sentiment and the melancholy of the preceding items on the program, rounded off the festive New Year's concert in the most fitting manner.

Music magazine- Hudební rozhledy 2/2005 Mr. Julius Hulek

Non-traditional Talichs

The fifth subscribers' concert of the Talich Chamber Orchestra (03/21) at the Agnes Monastery under its conductor Jan Talich jr. was an impressive and important act on Prague's musical scene this spring. This is because during the Holy Week before Easter, the TCO offered a complete performance of an absolutely unique work – the Seven Last Words of Christ, written by the classicist Joseph Haydn for Good Friday in the form of an orchestral suite, presumably in 1785.
Haydn wrote the Seven Last Words as a commissioned work for the Cathedral of Cadiz in Spain. During the original performance, the cathedral's interior was all clad in black cloth, with but one lamp illuminating the center. A priest recited each of Christ's last words, followed by the corresponding orchestral "sonata". Haydn mastered the difficult task with outstanding success, considering the abstract ideas of grave dogmatic importance that had to be captured musically with the means of expression available back then. Let us keep in mind that in a relatively large format (that would fill, as this specific performance without intermissions has shown, the dimensions of a standard, full-scale concert), Haydn had to deliver music that was at once serious, meditative, darkly dramatic, and expressing empathy, humility, and suffering. Moreover, Haydn handled in his very own way, and much ahead of his time, the demands that would later be imposed on programmatic music. This peculiar cyclical work was a milestone of his own, in particular symphonic, work.
The interpretation of the rarely performed Haydn opus discussed here must be called extraordinarily suggestive. Jan Talich behind the conductor's stand gave himself testimony of the way in which his approach to the work at hand had grown and ripened over time. He focused on the exactitude of details, but at the same time strived to capture the expressive depth of this unusual work, down to the individualization of each movement, the Introduction, and the Earthquake finale. (We hasten to add that the text passages from the gospel that set the scene for each of the seven parts were recited by Boris Rösner.) The conductor's focused effort was clearly reciprocated – the very young, shapeable ensemble responded in a quick-witted way and with their own, personal inventiveness, being able to built on their interaction of high rhythmic and
international quality.

Music Magazine – Hudebné rozhledy 5/2005 , Mr.Julius Hulek

LAST WORDS

On Holy Week's Monday, March 21, a very interesting concert anticipating Easter took place in Prague's Agnes Monastery. The Talich Chamber Orchestra presented – alas, but to a few dozen listeners – Seven Last Words of Christ, op. 51 by Joseph Haydn. In order to furnish the musical testimony of the original quartet version with an additional dimension of meaning, the orchestra invited Boris Rösner, this year's Thalia Prize laureate, to recite a sacral text from 1974 by Jean-Pierre Nortel (originally in French, translated by Michal Laznovský) that is related to Haydn's music. The concert thus gathered even more emotional charge and subliminal tension. Boris Rösner recited the text with intimate understanding, if rather civic and with the serene mindset of the 21st century person. One would expect Haydn's purely classicist music to be the ideal companion to Rösner's approach, with its conventional stylistic devices and its rationalism; however, owing to the outstanding performance of the orchestra under the baton of Jan Talich, it turned into a small drama full of emotions. The conductor proved able to wed the traditional sonority of the best Czech chamber orchestras with what have become generally acknowledged elements of the so-called historical performance practice, in particular in terms of dynamics, vibrato, and articulation. For those few in the know, the fifth subscribers' concert has thus become a true Easter event.

Music Magazine- Harmonie 5/2005, Mr.Lubos Stehlík

'Czech Dreams' Completed Musical Pilgrimage in Retz
/by our correspondent/
RETZ, 12/17/2004

The international music project Czech Dreams under the patronage of Magdalena Kozena and Václav Havel culminated in Retz, in Lower Austria, with a concert by Czech top musicians – the Talich Chamber Orchestra under its conductor Jan Talich, along with soloist Jana Bousková, a contemporary harpist in greatest demand.
The concert at the local town hall was preceded by the ceremonial execution of an understanding of cooperation between the festival Concentus Moraviae and the Retzer Land, a micro-region near the national border.
From the very first bars, the orchestra was guided by the intent to deliver a supreme performance. In the introductory piece by Jan Novak, Odarum concentus choro fidium, the ensemble displayed its strengths, in particular in terms of the differentiated timbre and the concerted execution of difficult rhythms. In interpretative terms, the orchestra's performance of the piece was appealing, if not exactly surprising. Unfortunately, the opening of the Concerto in F major No. 6 op. 9 for harp and orchestra by the 18th century composer Jan Krtitel Krumpholz was marked by technical failures of the harpist, though the performer presently won over the audience by virtue of her wide range of expression and her admirable dynamic spectrum. In the final piece, the Symphony in G minor by Antonín Rössler-Rosetti, the conductor nicely accentuated the bold and pugnacious aspects of this music, bringing the by now very intent audience under his spell.
The unique all-European festival with almost 120 concerts presented Czech music from the past four centuries with an unprecedented dramaturgic breadth and was visited by 85,000 people in sixteen European countries over the course of seven months.
Such success deserves a follow-up. The general manager of the project, David Ditrich, says: "Per request of our satisfied partners abroad, we have decided to prepare a continuation of the project in 2007. We would like to have the appearances of Czech top performers preceded by concert performances of students of Basic Music Schools."

Newspaper- Hospodařské noviny, 12/2005 Mrs. Markéta Juzová

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2004

Putting Back the Hilarious in "Haydn"
The Representative of the Viennese Classical Style is Front and Center at the Brühler Schlosskonzerte
by HANNA STYRIE BRÜHL

This year's one-week music festival as a part of the Brühler Schlosskonzerte promises to put back the hilarious in "Haydn". For the third consecutive time, the versatile work of Joseph Haydn is being examined in a series of concerts; this time, they focus on the cheerful side of this first representative of the Viennese Classical School, whose contemporaries attested to his distinct sense of humor.
It was not uncommon for Haydn to garnish even his symphonies with musical jokes, teasing the audience and "attuning them to boisterous cheerfulness". The Talich Chamber Orchestra from Prague kicked off the series with a first concert on Friday, in which they conveyed the fun one can have with Haydn, the inventor of the symphony and the string quartet, with a vital pleasure in performance and great precision – a successful homage that paved the way for the next six concerts.
Under the label "Sturm und Drang" [Storm and Stress], the Czech musicians presented the Symphonies No. 49 and No. 59, with Mozart's Violin Concerto in A major KV 219 as the centerpiece – all of which compositions sparkling with a keenness to experiment and high spirits.
It was instantly obvious from the Symphony in F minor, a.k.a. "La Passione", that the Talich Chamber Orchestra is able to play with rich timbre and great accuracy even without a conductor. The young concertmaster Helena Jirikovska firmly held the reins of the attentive ensemble.
The darkly shrouded Adagio was a balanced and precise success; the musicians developed the motivic abundance with much dedication and mastered the changing tempi and the melodic leaps in the Allegro with flowing ease. The strings played with a highly sensual sonority, and so did the oboes and horns.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart also confronts us with a cornucopia of thematic ideas in his Violin Concerto in A major No. 5 KV 219. Katrin Scholz, also playing for the first time at the Schlosskonzerte, stood out with a faultless, if in the beginning rather cold, rendition of the technically extremely demanding solo part.
On her precious Guadignini violin, she approached the Adagio, which could have done with a little more anguish, with unusual tautness. The interaction with the first violinist and with the orchestra – a considerate partner in this dialog with the soloist - was very sensitive, though.
With musical grace, Katrin Scholz mastered the final movement which held the performers and the audience in its spell with its indefatigable contrasts. The musicians' flexibility and alacrity were very rewarding. Finally, in Joseph Haydn's "Fire Symphony" (A major, Hoboken I:59), the Talich Chamber Orchestra indulged with enormous pleasure in setting off those musical firecrackers which lend the composition its name.

Newspaper -Kölnische Rundschau, Mrs.Hanna Styrie 26.7.2004