Czech Chamber Music Society • Adam Plachetka

Adam Plachetka was educated at the conservatory in his native town of Prague. In addition to his many national competition victories, Adam won First Prize at the Antonín Dvořákʼs International Vocal Competition.

In 2005 he made his debut at the National Theatre in Prague, since when he has appeared in Prague as Don Giovanni, Figaro (Le nozze di Figaro), Nardo (La finta giardiniera), Argante (Rinaldo) and Guglielmo (Così fan tutte), among others.

In september 2010 Adam became a member of the Ensemble of the Wiener Staatsoper. After his debut as Schaunard (La bohéme), he moved on to roles such as Melisso (Alcina), Don Giovanni, Dulcamara (Lʼelisir dʼamore), Figaro, Guglielmo, Publio (La clemenza di Tito), Mustafá (LʼItaliana in Algeri) and Alidoro (La Cenerentola).

Adamʼs engagements include appearances at the Salzburger Festspiele, Bayerische Staatsoper Munich, Pražské jaro, Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Bruxelles, Royal Opera House Covent Garden in London, Musikverein in Vienna, Festpielhaus Baden-Baden, Glyndebourne Festival, Deutsche Oper and Deutsche Staatsoper Berlin, Carnegie Hall in New York, Teatro alla Scala in Milan, Wigmore Hall in London and at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

He has taken part in recordings for Arte, Arthaus Musik, Česká televize, Český rozhlas, Deutsche Grammophon, Mezzo, Naxos, Orfeo, ORF and Supraphon.

Adam performs under the baton of such conductors as Alain Altinoglu, Marco Armiliato, Daniel Barenboim, Ivor Bolton, Bruno Campanella, John Fiore, Asher Fisch, Valery Gergiev, Friedrich Haider, Daniel Harding, Patrick Lange, Louis Langrée, Marc Minkowski, Riccardo Muti, John Nelson, Tomáš Netopil, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Robin Ticciati or Franz Welser-Möst.

David Švec studied piano and conducting first at the České Budějovice Conservatoire and then at the Janáček Academy of Performing Arts in Brno. In February 2000 he took part at conducting masterclasses under Sir Colin Davis in Dresden, and in 2002 he completed a study visit at the Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst in Vienna (under Leopold Hager). In 2004 he won the Bösendorfer Preis in the opera coaching category at the Belvedere International Competition in Vienna.

Although he also appears regularly in concert halls (Bamberg Symphony, Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, Moravian Philharmonic in Olomouc), David Švec profiles himself mainly as an opera conductor. Already as a student he was active at the Janáček Opera in Berlin, then in September 2003 he began working at Prague’s National Theatre, where he has had a full-time conducting engagement since 2011. Last year he became the chief conductor of opera at the South Bohemia Theatre in České Budějovice. He also makes guest appearances abroad at opera houses (Barcelona, Paris, Vienna, Ljubljana) and festivals (Glyndebourne). In 2014 for the publisher Bärenreiter, he made the new piano vocal score for Janáček’s opera Věc Makropulos, which was used for the first time for the production of the opera at the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich.

He has been collaborating with the Prague Chamber Orchestra as a pianist since 1998, and he is in demand as an especially sensitive chamber music partner. He has also made many CD recordings for Czech Radio. He appears on stage regularly with leading Czech singers such as soprano Eva Urbanová, bass-baritone Adam Plachetka, and soprano Kateřina Kněžíková, with whom he has appeared, for example, at the Prague Spring Festival (2010 and 2015). 

Zdeněk Fibich (1850–1900), a generation younger, selected poems with lyrical verses about love for musical settings from among the Evening Songs that Hálek had placed among the first thirty poems in his collection. In Fibich’s rich legacy of songs, the Five Songs from “Evening Songs”, Op. 5, represent his first cycle of songs to Czech texts. He composed the cycle between July and November 1871 after arriving in Prague, and he dedicated it to the wife of his supporter Ludevít Procházka, the singer Marta Procházková. She apparently had a particular liking for the last song (Přilítlo jaro zdaleka – Spring came flying from afar), singing it repeatedly at chamber concerts. The song, “full of lofty sentiment“ and raising “hopes of great promise” in the young composer, was praised in equally lofty terms by the period press. By age 21, Fibich had written dozens of songs with German texts, and yet to come would be a more mature outpouring of vocal works inspired mainly by Růžena Hanušová, Fibich’s fiancée and future wife. The Five Songs were published by Emanuel Wetzler in 1872.

The poems titled Evening Songs by Vítězslav Hálek (1835–1874) are known as typical examples of the literary products of the “May School”. This popular, inspirational collection of love poetry was first published in 1859. Hálek dedicated the collection to his pupil and future wife Dorotka Horáčková, but the poems deal not only with happiness on a personal level, but also with Hálek’s love for his country, of which the poet becomes a “bard”, whether sought after, honoured, heroized, or the opposite.

Bedřich Smetana (1824–1884) was Hálek’s friend and admirer. When he composed a cycle of five Evening Songs in 1879, he likewise dedicated the songs to his own wife (“to my wife Babeta” – Bettina Smetanová Ferdinandiová), and through his selection of verses, he emphasised the importance of the artist to the life of the nation. He put the songs Kdo v zlaté struny zahrát zná (He who can play the golden strings) and Nekamenujte proroky! (Do not stone the prophets!) at the very beginning of the cycle; through those songs, the theme of the artist and his nation comes across much more prominently than in the collection of poems, where they do not appear until towards the end. The imperative “Do not stone the prophets!” might be said to have followed Bedřich Smetana time after time and in many different contexts. The third song (Mně zdálo se – I had a dream) is usually characterised as “sorrowfully amorous”. Oscillating between parlando and a melodious cantilena, the song is innovative in the context of the works of Czech song composers of the latter half of the 19th century. After the contrasting fourth song Hej, jaká radost v kole (Hey, what joy in a circle), influenced by the polka, the whole cycle reaches its climax with the declaration of love Z svých písní trůn Ti udělám (From my songs, I shall make thee a throne). Smetana’s highly subjective Evening Songs where written when the composer was deaf, around the same time as the symphonic poem Blaník and the first sketches for the opera The Devil’s Wall. The songs (except for No. 3) were first heard at Žofín Palace on 4 January 1880 on a programme for the composer’s jubilee, performed by Marie Sittová, Josef Lev, and Emanuel Chvála. The cycle was issued in print that same year by the publisher F. A. Urbánek.

The piano cycle On an Overgrown Path is perhaps one of the most popular compositions by Leoš Janáček (1854–1928). The 15 intimate miniatures are simple, poetic, and yet typical of Janáček’s own musical language. The numbers are divided into two series composed between 1900 and 1911. Some of the little pieces from Series One (e.g. Our Evenings, Good Night!, The Barn Owl Has Not Flown Away!) have titles that fit in with our theme of evening and night. “In the little pieces from On an Overgrown Path, there are remembrances from long ago”, Janáček wrote to Jan Branberger; “they are so nice that I think there will never be an end to them.”

While Hálek’s Evening Songs evoke evenings full of love, the compositions that follow are more darkly coloured. Abendempfindung, K 523, by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) reflects upon the passing of time and the inevitability of death and speaks of the tears of friends left behind and of graves. The sentimental text tends to be attributed to Joachim Heinrich Campe, a German writer, linguist, and translator of the Age of Enlightenment, but his authorship is not certain. A similar poem titled Abendempfindung an Lana (sic, recte: Laura) was published in 1781 in Vienna in an anthology of poetry of that era, compiled by Johann Friedrich Schink. Mozart composed Abendempfindung on 24 June 1787, at about the same time as the opera Don Giovanni and Eine kleine Nachtmusik, and he highlighted the composition’s calm restraint and contemplative mood by using a regular eight-note rhythm in the accompanimental piano arpeggios. In March 1789, the Viennese publisher Artaria published the song together with another, An Chloe, K 524, in an edition titled “Zwei deutsche Arien”.

Franz Schubert (1797–1828), the master of German Romantic Lieder, also composed songs on themes connected with the evening (in both the literal and the figurative sense). The song Im Abendroth, D 799, was written to a poem with the same title by Karl Gottlieb Lappe, whose verses were also set to music by such composers as Beethoven and Schumann. “Abendroth”, meaning “sunset”, tells of divine beauty, which Schubert envisions in amazement and with a trusting, intimate relationship to the Creator. The 1825 composition impresses listeners with simple modesty, but concealed under that simplicity are a compositional maturity and attention to detail. The song was not published until 1832, well after Schubert’s death. Nacht und Träume, D 827, to words by Matthäus von Collin, was published in 1825 as part of Op. 43 with its text incorrectly attributed Friedrich Schiller, but it is older, its second version dating from June 1823. The music moves quietly in pianissimo at a slow tempo with a flowing cantilena above sixteenth-note figures in the piano, evoking elusive dreams like moonlight. These Schubert songs have appeared in various arrangements including a version by Max Reger for voice and orchestra and a transcription for piano and strings.

Richard Strauss (1864–1949) composed songs all his long life, from attempts at composing during his childhood to his final compositions from 1948. He liked poetry, and he helped bring greater societal attention to poems for which he wrote musical settings. In songs selected from Drei Lieder nach Gedichten von Otto Julius Bierbaum, Op. (No. 1 Traum durch die Dämmerung, No. 3 Nachtgang), we return to tender verses about love, to the mysterious mood of sunsets, and to the starry heavens; by 1895, when these Late-Romantic songs were written and published, Strauss was already enjoying his happy marriage to the soprano Pauline de Ahna. Originally intended for a medium voice and piano, the songs were later arranged for high and low voices as well and were given optional orchestral accompaniments. Strauss composed Die Nacht (Op. 10, No. 3 from the collection Acht Gedichte aus “Letzte Blätter”) in 1885 to a text by the Austrian poet Hermanna von Gilm. He even recorded it twice playing the piano part himself, for the second time in 1942 for a wartime radio broadcast from Vienna with the tenor Anton Dermota. Night—the thief of light, colour, and the souls of loved ones—thus gained a new and threatening context.

Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904) turned to Hálek’s Evening Songs even before Bedřich Smetana did so. In all, he set twelve poems from the collection to music, but their dating is not entirely clear. The songs are divided between Op. 3, Op. 8, and Op. 31, and one of the songs, Tak jak ten měsíc (Like the Moon), remained in manuscript. The songs are usually assumed to date from 1876, having been composed between Dvořák’s second and third cycles of Moravian Duets, but they may be even older. Only Op. 31 was published with the title Evening Songs in an edition issued in Prague by F. A. Urbánek (1883) with a dedication to the baritone Josef Lev, who sang two of the songs at the premiere on 16 September 1882 with Dvořák at the piano. These strophic songs with their clear piano accompaniment cannot compete with Dvořák’s more mature opuses in the genre, but they represent an important moment in the composer’s artistic development. The piano piece Night Journey, serving on the programme like a respite along the way before the last songs, is from the cycle Poetic Tone Pictures, Op. 85. Dvořák composed it and had it published immediately in 1889, masterfully satisfying the demand of his publisher Simrock for smaller-scale pieces that would be enjoyable for performers and listeners alike.