A NEW CZECH ENSEMBLE BAROQUE ALBUM

Czech Ensemble Baroque, one of the leading European specialists in authentic early music performance, has added another instalment to its series of František Ignác Antonín Tůma recordings. The new album, to be released on Supraphon, features specific liturgical pieces from the later creative period of the composer, who in mid-18th-century Vienna was primarily lauded for his sacred music. Titled after one of his works, Vesperae, it will be available on Friday 15 November 2024 on CD and in digital formats. This year, we are commemorating the 320th anniversary of the composer’s birth and the 250th anniversary of his death. Tůma is yet another significant figure whose legacy we are celebrating within the current Year of Czech Music.

The new Czech Ensemble Baroque album contains vespers and litanies (Vesperae de confessore, Litaniae Reginae martyrum), designated for performance on major feast days, whose lustre is enhanced by clarinos, trumpets or timpani. It includes one of Tůma’s eight surviving settings of the famous medieval sequence Stabat Mater. The composer also wrote a great many instrumental pieces in which he applied elements of the modern galant style, while embracing and deftly combining techniques characteristic of Italian and French music. The grandiose Ouverture in C contrasts starkly with the more modest Sinfonia in d and the Partita in g, which have survived within a music collection in Vienna. With the exception of Stabat Mater, Czech Ensemble Baroque present all the works featured on the album in modern-day premiere.

Founded 25 years ago by the conductor Roman Válek, Czech Ensemble Baroque consists of an orchestra, a choir and soloists, professional musicians hailing from the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland and Germany. They have collaborated with Supraphon for many years, having made numerous acclaimed recordings. The Czech Ensemble Baroque discography has now been extended by a new František Ignác Antonín Tůma album, titled Vesperae. This year, we commemorate the 320th anniversary of the composer’s birth and the 250th anniversary of his death. Tůma is thus one of the great musical figures whose legacy we are celebrating within the current Year of Czech Music.

“This album is our fourth featuring Tůma’s music. The experience with working on the projects has confirmed my opinion that he was an extraordinary composer within the global context, one who arrived at a truly singular style. When adding the specific milieu of Vienna’s imperial court, churches and monasteries, we hear wonderful, original music that completes the portfolio of the best Baroque Europe had to offer,” says the conductor and artistic director of Czech Ensemble Baroque, Roman Válek.