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 (PPC). Most of his artistic work with the choir consists of rehearsing and performing the a cappella repertoire and preparing the choir to perform in large-scale cantatas, oratorios, and operatic projects, during which he collaborates with world-famous conductors and orchestras (such as the Berlin Philharmonic, the Czech Philharmonic, the Israel Philharmonic, and the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic).

Besides leading the PPC, he also engages in other artistic activities, especially in collaboration with the vocal ensemble Martinů Voices, which he founded in 2010. As a conductor or choirmaster, his name appears on a large number of recordings that the PPC have made for important international labels (Decca Classics, Supraphon); in recent years, he has been devoting himself systematically to the recording of Bohuslav Martinů’s choral music. His recordings have received extraordinary acclaim abroad and have earned honours including awards from the prestigious journals Gramophone, BBC Music Magazine, and Diapason.

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.

A graduate of Prague’s Academy of Performing Arts and of a year-long study visit at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hamburg, since 2006 Daniela Valtová Kosinová has been the solo organist and principal keyboard player of the Prague Symphony Orchestra. As a soloist, she collaborates with other Czech and foreign orchestras and appears regularly with the Czech Philharmonic, with which she has twice toured the USA. Her first performance with this orchestra of the Glagolitic Mass, to which she “found a path of her own”, took place at Vienna’s Musikverein under the baton of Jiří Bělohlávek, followed by several more performances including one on a floating stage on the Vltava and others on a tour of Europe in 2022. 

A winner of third prize and the title of laureate at the Brno International Organ Competition in 2002, she is often invited to such leading music festivals as Beethovenfest Bonn, Prague Spring, Smetana’s Litomyšl, and Janáček May. She is a cofounder of the concert programme Music Between the Words, and she also devotes herself to composing. In 2010 she released a jazz album of her own music titled Meeting Point, and she has appeared at numerous jazz festivals.