Mucha: Chamber Music Stamic Quartet, Prague Wind Quintet, Patricia Goodson, Vilém Veverka, Jan Machat

• Geraldine Mucha (1927 - 2012):
• 1String Quartet No. 1: I. Variations on a Hucul Folk-Song06:09
• 2String Quartet No. 1: II. Dumka06:46
• 3String Quartet No. 1: III. Arkan03:12
• 4Variations on an Old Scottish Song09:50
• 5Tempo di Mazurka01:36
• 6Karel František Josef00:30
• 7Minna Loveday Decandole00:26
• 8Freddie Decandole00:34
• 9Lullaby for Alisdair01:04
• 10For Erika01:47
• 11Naše Cesta / Our Journey10:40
• 12String Quartet No. 213:42
• 13Wind Quintet13:45
• 14Epitaph in Memory of Jirí Mucha08:13
• Total Runtime01:18:14

Info for Mucha: Chamber Music

World premiere recordings, reviving the individual voice and fine craftsmanship of a forgotten English-Czech composer writing in the middle of the last century.

Born in London in 1917, Geraldine Mucha learnt to read music before words; her Scottish father, Marcus Thomson, taught at the Royal Academy of Music. Having turned 18 she became a student there herself, and at a party in 1941 she met her future husband, Jan Mucha, an exiled Czech war correspondent and son of the artist Alphonse Mucha. They settled in his home city of Prague at the end of the war, but Geraldine fled the Communist regime for Scotland after the invasion of Prague in 1968, and returned only after the fall of Communism in 1989. Jiří died in 1991 but Geraldine lived on until 2012, leaving a fair-sized body of instrumental music which had been performed throughout her lifetime but is only now being rediscovered.

Only one other disc of Mucha’s work is available, dedicated to her orchestral music. This newly available album, made in Prague in 2015, begins with the First String Quartet which she wrote in 1944 as a recent RAM graduate: a tight, well-argued work, inflected by the fiercely rhythmic folk idiom of Janáček and Bartók. There follows a collection of seven piano works including her most extensive piece for the instrument, a set of variations on an ‘Old Scottish Song’ which also shows a thorough command of a central-European idiom The single-movement Second String Quartet dates from 1970 opens with a keening, Scottish-accented lament: taut and concise, both concealing and saying much in a short span. The Wind Quintet is a late work, from 1998, still elegiac in mood but now balanced by the kind of dance-like flow and momentum placing it in the tradition of wind-ensemble works from Mozart to Poulenc. This carefully programmed album ends with the Epitaph for oboe and string quintet which she composed in 1991 in memory of her late husband.

At a time when the music of past women composers is finally receiving its due, this album dedicated to Geraldine Mucha deserves the attention of all listeners in search of new, expressive worlds.

Geraldine Mucha’s (1917-2012) long life spanned two world wars and a brutal Communist regime. She was born in London to Scottish parents, both artists/musicians. Her early and evident musical talent was encouraged by Arnold Bax and Benjamin Dale. From 1935, aged 18, she studied formally at the Royal Academy of Music, where her teachers included two younger, more modern composers, William Alwyn and Alan Bush.

In 1941 she met a young, exiled Czech war correspondent called Jirí Mucha, son of the famous graphic artist Alphonse Mucha, a leading figure of the Art Nouveau movement. They married and moved to Prague in 1945, at the end of the war. The communist regime considered the works of Alphone Mucha “decadent’ and the young couple were severely thwarted in promoting his legacy. They fled the regime’s opposition, and went back to Scotland, only to return to Prague after the “Velvet Revolution” of 1989.

Geraldine Mucha’s remarkable compositions breathe the Middle European 20-th century style of Janácek and Bartók: strong rhythms, often reminiscent of folk music, accentuate a late-romantic melodic idiom.

Included are two string quartets, a wind quintet, works for flute and piano and piano solo works. Performed with infectious vitality by the Stamic Quartet and Prague Wind Quintet, as well as eminent pianist Patricia Goodson.

Stamic Quartet
Prague Wind Quintet
Patricia Goodson, piano
Vilém Veverka, oboe
Jan Machat, flute

The Stamic Quartet
was established in 1985 by four experienced performers – Bohuslav Matoušek, Josef Kekula, Jan Pěruška and Vladimír Leixner – and was a success right from its very start. The following year the ensemble won the Czech Chamber Music Society prize, and soon afterwards in Switzerland it made its first recordings. During that same period the ensemble also won a quartet competition organized by European radio stations in Salzburg (1986), which led to appearances in concert halls throughout the world. The quartet has performed in London (the Queen Elizabeth Hall), Rome (Santa Cecilia), Zurich (Tonhalle), Washington (the Kennedy Center), New York (the Metropolitan Museum), Tokyo (the Tsuda Hall) and elsewhere. It is a frequent guest at the most prestigious festivals, including, of course, the Prague Spring festival. The ensemble has a broad repertoire that incorporates works from the very earliest years of string quartet history right up to the most progressive works in contemporary quartet writing.

The Stamic Quartet very much enjoys reviving forgotten Czech works of the Classical period. In recent years it has learnt and performed quartets by several Czech composers living and working in Vienna at that time, including Jan Křtitel Vaňhal, Pavel Vranický and Leopold Koželuh. As regards the music of Pavel Vranický, the ensemble’s members also work as specialist consultants in the publication of the composer’s string quartet works. Among their highly acclaimed recordings are complete sets of the string quartets of Josef Bohuslav Foerster and especially the quartets of Sofia Gubaidulina. The Stamic Quartet’s current line-up with the first violinist Jindřich Pazdera and the cellist Petr Hejný, who replaced the prematurely deceased Vladimír Leixner, links up in all respects to the ensemble’s finest traditions – original sound, extensive repertoire, as well as high artistic quality.

The Prague Wind Quintet
is an ensemble of Czech origin. Beethoven's onetime colleague, the Czech flutist and composer Antonin Reicha, invented this format and wrote 26 quintets which set the standard. The year 1998 is the 70th anniversary of the Prague Wind Quintet. The original quintet was established in 1928 by the oboist and long-time permanent conductor of the Prague Symphony Orchestra Vaclav Smetacek (1906-1986). The quintet was reorganized in 1968 with new members.

The ensemble has long given concerts throughout Europe and the USA. They have recorded entensively. It has received critical acclaim for its instrumental mastery and unique feeling for style. The quintet gives definitive interpretations of all the classics of the literature, but contemporary music forms a significant part of its repetoire, because composers have written many compositions for them after hearing one of their performances.

Booklet for Mucha: Chamber Music