Musica Florea.

Musica Florea is today one of the best ensembles in Europe specialising in the performance of earlier music on period instruments and basing its interpretation on the careful study of sources and period aesthetics. In the almost fourteen years of its existence it has appeared at hundreds of concerts in the Czech republic and throughout Europe, and has also been a guest at such important music festivals as the Prague Spring, Europalia, Resonanzen Wien, Festival van Vlaanderen Brugge, Europamusicale and others. As well as playing the works of J. S. Bach, G. P. Telemann, Jan Dismas Zelenka, A. Vivaldi, J. B. Lully, W. A. Mozart and other well known composers, Musica Florea has given modern premieres designed to revive interest in many forgotten composers and their music.

I first encountered the Musica Florea ensemble at the 1995 Prague Spring Festival, where it performed a work by the Czech master of the earlier 18th century Jan Dismas Zelenka - Missa Sanctissimae Trinitatis (ZWV 17) of 1735. I was very struck by the precision of performance from what was at that stage an ensemble full of young musicians entirely unknown to me, and it left an outstanding impression. Since then I have followed with interest the further development of the ensemble at numerous concerts and in recordings that soon started to collect many awards from Czech and foreign music institutions.

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The origins of Musica Florea go back to 1992, when Marek Stryncl, the founder, cellist, conductor and musical director of the ensemble and its first members were studying at the conservatory in Teplice. With good facilities and some helpfully inclined professors, the members of the young group became more closely involved in Baroque music.

The ensemble's first concert took place on the 10th of March 1992 in the Church of St John the Baptist in Teplice. It presented a chamber version--2 violins, viola, 2 cellos, double bass and harpsichord (or organ)--of works by the lesser known Baroque composers Johann Rosenmuller and Tarquinius Merula and a mass by Adam Michna of Otradovice. For the Michna mass Marek Stryncl found six amateur singers, which in itself reveals his desire to find a new, non-traditional sound using voices unencumbered by classical training.

"In an experimental spirit I really looked forward to 'untrained' voices, as a way of getting closer to the aesthetics of period singing in the circumstances of today.""

At this concert the members of the ensemble were already using old

instruments, initially lent to them by Pavel Klikar, a friend of Marek Stryncl since shortly before the Revolution in 1989. It was from Klikar that Stryncl also gained his first practical experience when playing in his ensemble Musica Antiqua Praha.

"... in the first year on the Valtice courses I completely fell for the charm of 'authentic performance' thanks to one of the concerts by the Musica Antiqua Praha. I liked the completely different sound of the Baroque instruments, the colour, technique of play, and even the tuning between the separate pieces. It just grabbed me ..."

Musica Florea does not have a fixed number of players but uses different combinations of musicians drawn from a circle who co-operate with the ensemble depending on the needs of each programme. Thus other strings, a wind section, and sometimes percussion, can be added to the seven core players--2 Baroque violins, viola, cello, archlute, double bass and harpsichord / organ.

The core of the orchestra is therefore stringed instruments, sometimes with a viola da gamba which ceased to be used in later music. The members of the ensemble mainly play on original old instruments from the later 18th century, and the viola da gamba is a copy produced in the 1990s on the model of old instruments from the turn of the 17th/18th centuries. Premysl Vacek, the court player on the archlute and theorbo in Musica Florea, uses Jiri Cepelak's copies of instruments from the mid-17th century.

As far as wind instruments are concerned, when necessary a Baroque recorder or flute, oboe, chalumeau (always played by Christian Leitherer), corno da caccia, bassoon, clarino and sometimes trombones are added. The players mostly use copies of the original wind instruments produced in the 1990s, while the ensemble's bassoonist plays an early 18th-century German instrument. Playing these wind instruments in line with Baroque models demands considerable dexterity in the creation of tone and above all in the intonation, where the player must use his skills to make up for the technical shortcomings of the instrument. That is one reason why I have great admiration for the solo wind passages for example in the recording of Bach cantatas with Magdalena Kozena, where we find brilliantly executed obligato parts by the flutes, oboe, bassoon and horn. The whole family of trombones, alto, tenor and bass trombone can be heard on the recording Vejvanovsky--Rittler--Biber (Studio Matous 1996).

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Musica Florea's first recording was the Missa Sanctissimae Trinitatis by Jan Dismas Zelenka. In this, the last of his five crowning mass compositions, the influence of the then modern forms of secular music, concerto and opera, is apparent. One curious feature of the recording was that it was made in the Chateau of Duchcov at a temperature of 14 [degrees]C (due to a heating breakdown). The ensemble more than coped with the unusual conditions, and the recording won an award in the prestigious French magazine Diapason.

Musica Florea has since returned more than once to the musical heritage of Jan Dismas Zelenka. Apart from concert performances of his Psalms and Lamentations, the ensemble took a major part in the ambitious modern premiere of the one Czech coronation opera. Sub olea pacis et palma virtutis (for Charles VI, first performed on the 12th of September 1723 in the Prague Clementinum). A stage presentation of this opera took place on the 17th of July 2000 in the Vladislav Hall of Prague Castle as the final concert of the Europamusicale Festival. It was an enthralling occasion, thanks to the choreography by the French director Marc Leclercq which underlined the visual side of the work, striking costumes by the artist Marie Fulkova amd sensitive conducting by Marek Stryncl who was still only twenty five at the time. The orchestra was created by combining the instrumental ensembles Musica Florea, Musica Aeterna, and the Ansamble Philidor, and the vocal elements provided by the boys choir Boni Pueri and soloists Anna Hlavenkova (soprano), Noemi Kiss (soprano), Markus Foster (counter tenor), Jaroslav Brezina (tenor), Adam Zdunikowski (tenor) and Ales Prochazka (bass).

Shortly after the performance Supraphon promptly made a recording (SU 3520-2 232), which was released almost exactly a year after the production of the work at the festival. This project, complete with the prestigious label "world premiere recording" offered the world one of the most important of Zelenka's vocal-instrumental works in authentic form. It was a recording for which Musica Florea won the Cannes Classical Award at the world music fair MIDEM in 2003

So far the most recent project on work by Jan Dismas Zelenka is a recording of his Good Friday Responsorios (Supraphon 2005, SU 3806-2 2).

One very important area in the ensemble's repertoire is made up of works from the archives of the episcopal residence in Kromeriz, which in the years 1664 - 1695 was the seat of the music-loving Bishop of Olomouc Karel Liechtenstein-Castelcorn. This includes above all works by the composers Pavel Josef Vejvanovsky, Johann Heinrich Schmelzer, Heinrich Ignatz Franz Biber and Filipp Jakob Rittler. The ensemble has devoted three compact disks, released in 1995 - 1996 to these authors.

In July 2001 at the Chateau of Kromeriz Musica Florea presented the modern premiere of Vejvanovsky's St Wenceslas Vespers. This composition is also included in a recording for Supraphon in 2002 (SU 3535-2 231), in which apart from Musica Florea the participants were the choir and young soloists from the Boni Pueri boys choir and the soloists Jaroslav Brezina (tenor) and Michael Pospisil (bass). The ensemble has also presented the works of less well known composers from the Kromeriz archives, such as A. Bertalli, C. Rosier, J. J. Flixi, J. K. Dolar and others.

Another unique Musica Florea recording (Supraphon 2000, SU 3474-2 231) is Cithara Nova by Josef Leopold Dukat, written in 1707. It shows clearly that this Czech composer, organist and regenschori in the Premonstratensian monastery in Zeliv has a worthy place among the composers of the High Baroque. The compact disk contains 7 of his total of 12 church cantatas for solos, two violins and basso continuo (prepared by Premysl Vacek). The core members of the ensemble are here accompanied by soloists Anna Hlavenkova (soprano), Markus Foster (counter tenor) and Ales Prochazka (bass).

Musica Florea has completed many other concert and recording projects up to now, let us name here just a few more that have drawn particular public attention for their unique character or other reasons.

From this point of view the seven concerts that were part of a tour with the mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kozena with a repertoire of Bach cantatas and oratorios, complemented by Brandenburg Concertos nos. 3 and 4 were an extraordinarily successful achievement. This fruitful collaboration also resulted in a compact disk (Polygram 1997, J.S.Bach - Arias), which won the prestigious "Golden Harmony Award 1997" as the best domestic recording.

Musica Florea returned to opera in April 2000, performing for a stage production of Jean Phillipe Rameau's Castor and Pollux at the Prague Estates Theatre. This repertoire production was based on French-Czech cooperation between the National Theatre and the Institut Francais in Prague. In Prague the international team created a project unique even by all-European standards, creating for the first time on a modern European stage a production faithful to the Baroque reality in almost every detail (including the lighting of the stage by candles). The staging opened the way for other new and adventurous productions at this leading Prague theatre.

French music has been the subject of two recordings in 2004 and 2005, created in collaboration with the Centre for Baroque Music in Versailles. These are four major motets by Jean Baptiste Lully and a motet for two choirs by Marc'Antoine Charpentier. (K617157, K617171).

In the Spring of 2004 the ensemble expanded its repertoire to include the later 19th century by performing several pieces by Antonin Dvorak on period instruments. At a June concert as part of the Prague Spring festival, Musica Florea played the Overture to the opera Vanda op. 25, Symphonic Variations op. 78 and the 7th Symphony in D minor in a form reminiscent of the mildly scandalous performance of Smetana's Ma vlast [My Country] at the opening concert of the Prague Spring in 1996 by the British London Classical Players under the baton of Sir Roger Norrington. Dvorak's pieces were performed by an ensemble consisting of eleven first and nine second violins, seven violas, five cellos, four double basses, two flutes, oboes, clarinets and bassoons, five french horns, two trumpets, three trombones and timpani. The stringed instruments used gut strings, and the wind instruments were either originals from the period 1860 - 1900 or modern copies. Once again there was a wave of polemic over whether music of the later 19th century should be played on period instruments and with the original, more chamber-style set of players, but this time--thanks to the very precise performance by the combined ensembles Musica Florea, Amphion Blaseroktett Basel and Solamente naturali, the critics were generally significantly more positive.

One novelty in the Autumn of 2005 was a series of concerts entitled "Rediscovered Concertos of the Czech Baroque". Here Musica Florea presented works by generally little known composers of Czech origin such as Johann Joseph Ignac Brentner, Antonin Reichenauer, and Joseph Caspar Ferdinand Fischer.

Musica Florea certainly doesn't suffer from a shortage of repertoire. An impressive series of recordings for companies at home and abroad, very diverse international projects, and a revelation of musical treasures from almost three centuries--all this adds up to great promise for the future and an assurance not only that Musica Florea will go from strength to strength, but that other similar ensembles will be encouraged by their success and find in them impulses and inspiration.

An interview with the director of Musica Florea, cellist and conductor Marek Stryncl

Your ensemble Musica Florea has been working successfully for almost 14 years. What have these long years of musical collaboration given you personally?

First and foremost the knowledge that no sort of artist activity can be torn away from the concept of beauty, which in contemporary aesthetic theory tends to be damned more than anything else. It seems to me that it is suffered at best only so that artists can ostentatiously and defiantly avoid it. In out time beauty has been materialised--reduced purely to pleasant emotions or experiences, and this has led many people, instead of trying to restore to beauty its right face, to reject it altogether as an inferior category, inadequate for the explanation and understanding of modern trends in art. But the classical concept of beauty has broader, metaphysical implications. It no way rejects artistic contrasts involving ugliness, dramatic contrast or even images of despair, but it assimilates them in a meaningful whole which is ultimately receptively perceived as a "gift", a "grace" a "glorification". The main overarching principle behind the aspirations of artists and their creations is not absurdity, which has afflicted especially the 20th century like a plague. So long as classical artistic principles (unity in diversity and beauty) are not degraded, in a way full of contradictions, to the level of mere material experience, they have the power to explain even modern artistic movements. They simply involve an insistence on the fact that art must ultimately, to put it shortly, be meaningful and must not deny the metaphysical nature of human existence, to which the phenomenon of beauty, the good and the true belong as automatically as human beings breathe. Can we really afford definitions of art of the type "art is essentially meaningless, indefinable" or "art simply naturally feeds off itself and devours itself," or else that "beauty is just a by-product like the experience of taste"? The Marxist dialectics that inform these ideas are massively contradicted by the spontaneous efforts of artists. To create works of art while believing that they deserve to produce no feelings of exaltation, wonder and interest is barbarism, and we are reaping the fruits of this attitude in full. It makes no difference whether the object of this exalted feeling is a kitschy garden gnome or Bach's Art of the Fugue. According to today's art theorists the objective nature of a work can have no decisive influence on its beauty, because these theorists reduce beauty simply to subjective "pleasure", which arises just out of the chance encounter between a person and a work of art. We are no longer allowed to decide on the justification or otherwise for such "pleasure" because that conjures up a moral appeal, so hated today, suggesting that acts we enjoy might be in breach of an objective law of the good, based on the "objective character of the work", especially a work of man. The desire for genuine "character", originality, something right and meaningful is what has given life to the authentic performance phenomenon including our own ensemble. The attempt to get rid of false ideological prejudice in attitudes to the cultural artistic legacy of our predecessors is something essential. Over the 14 years of the existence of our ensemble I have realised that it would have ceased to exist without these ideals. I have discovered at first hand and keep on discovering that human or financial obstacles that seem insoluble can be overcome by painstaking faithfulness to a vocation that relates not just to the music, but to the members of the ensemble. Despite small changes the core of the ensemble has remained the same, which is something I have to rate as a decent moral achievement.

You take on various different roles in your ensemble and elsewhere. Do you think of yourself as more a cellist or more a conductor?

Both. So far I really haven't felt that artistic schizophrenia that afflicts some conductors until they get it together to decide which has precedence. Although as a conductor I am very committed to symphonic romantic or contemporary repertoire, there would be no point in my saying goodbye to the branch I have been trained in--older music, which is clearly based on a chamber approach to performance. Actively playing an instrument is a necessity for me, because it is the only way to internalise the newly discovered means of expression that can then become second nature to performers and conductors.

What are you working on currently with Musica Florea? Are you planning something new for the near future?

I must admit that in the last few years we have presented so many new pieces that we really ought to give the public the chance to get to know them, and that will be our goal over the next year. Most of the projects concerned have already been presented (F. X. Richter Te Deum, rediscovered concertos by Czech Baroque composers--Gurecky, Reichenauer, the complete performance of J. S. Bach's Musical Offering and the Art of the Fugue and so on.) We are preparing to record all Bach's Brandenburg Concertos, which we performed in concert last year. Currently we are "editing" our second recordings of the symphonic works of A. Dvorak using period romantic instruments (the 8th Symphony, the prelude to Vanda, Prague Waltzes, Polka).

What about your current musical activities apart from leading the ensemble? I am thinking of your work in other musical groups ...

Recently I have been forced to cut back my activities in other groups, because a growing family is demanding in terms of time. But these are groups I worked with more or less on an ad hoc basis. I now have the interesting prospect of working with the Capela Apollinis ensemble and the harpsichordist Barbara Maria Willi. As a conductor I shall be involved in projects with the Spanish Baroque orchestra La principessa filosofa and with many other chamber and symphonic orchestras especially outside Prague.

I know that you recorded music by Vladimir Godar with the Solamente Naturali ensemble for a film by Petr Sulik, and this was played on Baroque instruments. Have you been involved in other similar projects? Do you ever have a yen to try a completely different field of music?

My collaboration with Vladimir Godar has been going at full tilt in the last year. I recorded other pieces by him with this orchestra and the soloist Iva Bittova (folk music elements are present, of course). I believe that in the future audiences in Prague will be able to enjoy this project. I would like to mention an interesting avantgarde concert at the Hradec Kralove Philharmonic Festival, which cleverly combined what at first sight might seem completely incongruous, J. S. Bach's Musical Offering and the violin concerto Offertorium by Sofia Gubaidulina, composed on the same theme. In addition to Musica Florea the concert incolved the Hradec Kralove Philharmonic and the soloist Gabriela Demeterova (violin). I wouldn't want to exclude other genres. Maybe I shall get round to them too.