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The Bohemia beat in the 18th century
Czechia was the beating heart of Bohemian baroque music in the 18th Century. As a leading performer of historically informed performances, Lenka Torgersen tells Karen Yeung about the joy of discovering and performing baroque music from her home country:
KY: Do you enjoy playing the music of the Bohemian baroque composers? Does this music resonate particularly with you as a Czech musician?
LT: I am a member of Collegium Marianum Prague and the most important part of our research and concert activities is to discover works written by Czech known and unknown composers, many of the music are undiscovered. It is a pleasure to find and perform them, especially because the level of the musical performances, compositions and instrumental skills of the musicians in the 18th century in Prague was extremely high.
Music from Eighteenth-Century Prague
Count Václav Morzin (1676–1737) was a Bohemian aristocrat, he was very much in love with arts and especially in music so he had funded an orchestra with all the best musicians from Prague to play in his orchestra.
Count Václav Morzin was also a supporter and friend of the Venetian composer Antonio Vivaldi (1678 – 1741). Vivaldi wrote lots of music for Morzin's orchestra and Vivaldi had actually dedicated the Four Seasons to Count Morzin.
František Jiránek, was properly a student of Vivaldi). Antonín Reichenauer, these two names of wonderful composers and instrumentalists who play in Count Morzin's orchestra.
The bassoonist of Count Morzin's orchestra was Anton Möser. Vivaldi had composed the bassoon concerto RV496 dedicated for Count Morzin.
In 1723, the year of Charles VI's coronation, he became the King of Bohemia, the governor of the Czech Estates during the Habsburg Empire era. He spent almost one year in Prague with the Viennese court. During his stay in Prague, there were many huge festive activities and events like operas that happened all year around in this city.
List of composer serve in the court of King Charles VI during his time in Prague:
Francesco Maria Veracini (1690 – 1768)
Antonio Caldara ( c. 1670 – 1736)
Giuseppe Tartini (1692 – 1770)
Silvius Leopold Weiss (1687 – 1750)
Johann Joseph Fux (1660-1741)
Johann Georg Pisendel (1687–1755)
And more……
Charles Burney (1726-1814) was an organist, composer, and the foremost music historian of his time in England, labelled Czechia as the conservatory of Europe. So yes, it makes me happy and proud to play the works of my baroque colleagues!
