23-02-2004

Czech Music 2004

2004 is a year of Czech musical anniversaries. No less than 60 major Czech composers and musicians celebrate anniversaries this year. This year has been officially declared "Year of Czech Music" with over 700 special musical events. Radio Prague is here to take you through the year, reporting on events as they occur, talking to performers and composers, and bringing you features about Czech composers - both the best known and the neglected - their music and their lives.

Here are some of this year's most important Czech musical anniversaries:

Antonin Dvorak (1841-1904) - a hundred years since the death of the best-known of all Czech composers on 1st May 1904, internationally marked as a UNESCO anniversary

Bedrich Smetana (1824-1884) - 180 years since the birth, 120 years since the death of the great composer of the Czech national revival.

Leos Janacek (1854-1928) - 150th anniversary of the birth of the composer (UNESCO anniversary), 100 years since the premiere of his most famous opera Jeji pastorkyna (Jenufa).

Josef Suk (1874-1935) - 130th anniversary of the birth of the most celebrated late romantic Czech composer, member of the Czech Quartet, and Dvorak's son-in-law.

Bohuslav Martinu (1890-1959) - 45th anniversary of the composer's death.

For more of this year's Czech music anniversaries, click here.

For more on the history of Czech classical music, have a look at Radio Prague's "History of Music" pages that take you on a guided tour from the Middle Ages to Martinu.

Jiri Slitr It's not just classical music that is being celebrated in the Year of Czech Music. For example, this year would have been the 80th birthday of Jiri Slitr one half of the great musical comic duo of Suchy and Slitr.

Karel Kryl It's also ten years since the death and sixty years since the birth of the singer/songwriter Karel Kryl, who - more than anyone else - put into song the hopes and disappointments of the Prague Spring and the period that followed the Soviet invasion.

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Related links

www.czechmusic.org - official site of Czech Music 2004

www.czechmusic.com/dictionary1/ - a dictionary of Czech classical music

www.musica.cz - site of the Czech Music Information Centre

www.festival.cz - site of the Prague Spring international music festival

www.janacek-nadace.cz - site of the Leos Janacek Foundation

www.leosjanacek.co.uk - about Leos Janacek

www.musicweb.uk.net/dvorak - the Dvorak Society (UK)

www.nm.cz/mad/ - site of the Antonin Dvorak Museum in Prague

www.martinu.cz - The Bohuslav Martinu Foundation

www.terezinmusic.org - music and the Holocaust

www.kapralova.org - site of the Kapralova Society, devoted to the Czech composer Vitezslava Kapralova and to promoting women in music.