Editorial.

Dear Readers, and friends of Czech music. The magazine Czech Music enters the new year in a new format. We have decided that a quarterly with a larger number of pages will be better suited to our goal, which is to present articles and information about Czech music and partially compensate for the lack of sufficient literature on Czech musical culture in English.

The face of this issue is Zdenek Macal, who has been appointed principal conductor of the Czech Philharmonic from this season. Our interview with the conductor is complemented by an article on the history and present situation of Czech orchestras.

We also offer two longer articles on Leos Janacek, this time from a slightly unusual point of view. Folk music and the rhythms and melody of speech were important sources of inspiration for Janacek and it is these that are our subject in the current issue.

We return to the contemporary music scene with an interview with the composer Miroslav Pudlak and a review of the premiere of Martin Smolka's opera, Nagano.

In this issue you will find the first of a series of supplements called Profiles, designed to mark the Year of Czech Music and introduce some of the composers whose jubilees fall in this year. We have chosen those who in our view had a major influence on the development of Czech music but who are not always so well known in the rest of the world. This time it is Bedrich Smetana, usually considered the founder of Czech national music in general and opera in particular. The second figure is the much lesser known Vaclav Jan Tomasek, Smetana's predecessor, who is important primarily for his compositions for piano.

I believe you will find a great deal of interesting information in this issue and I look forward to our meeting at the next issue of Czech Music.

MATEJ KRATOCHVIL

EDITOR