Celebrating Czech songs, with Magdalena Kožená
In today’s Sunday Music Show, we present you the recording Czech Songs, sung by Magdalena Kožená. She is accompanied the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, led by conductor Simon Rattle. The selection presents a number of folk songs by Czech authors and artists with Czech roots.
Magdalena’s selection features Bohuslav Martinů’s Nipponari, which was inspired by Japanese culture, and his Songs on a Page gains deeper meaning knowing he wrote them in the USA, where he fled from the Nazi threat. His colleagues and contemporaries, Hans Krás and Gideon Klein, were unable to escape and both perished in concentration camps.
Krás’s German-language Four Orchestral Songs reflect a fascination with nonsense verse, typical of avant-garde circles in the early 1920s. Klein’s Lullaby can be related to Jewish folk songs, but its musical realization shows an openness to French musical styles.
And of course, no Czech song recital would be complete without Antonín Dvořák; the album features his Evening Songs and Songs Op. 2. Many of these pieces are best known with piano accompaniment, but in this recording, they are heard in orchestral arrangements.
We hope you enjoy it.
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