"Leden" ("January")
Text of excerpt

Dnes v noci vymaloval mraz
na moje okno krehkou vazu
desim se zimnich dnu i vaz
desim se jejich zimostrazu.

Today in the night the frost painted
on my window a delicate vase
I am horrified of winter days and vases,
I am horrified of their boxwoods. ...

From "January" by Vitezslava Kapralova

Listen to an excerpt: "January" MP3 (requires audio plugin)

Asst. Prof. Timothy Cheek has reignited interest in the compositions of the Czech female composer Vitezslava Kapralova (1915-40). His CD Forever Kapralova features Kapralova songs performed by soprano Dana Buresova (Supraphon Records, 2004). See www.kapralova.org

Cheek

Timothy Cheek is an expert on Czech vocal and chamber music. An assistant professor of performing arts and vocal arts in the U-M School of Music, he joined the faculty in 1994 following studies at Oberlin, the University of Texas at Austin and Michigan. He served opera internships at the Teatro Comunale in Florence, Italy, and at the National Theatre in Prague. His performances as a collaborative pianist have taken him to 12 countries, and have been heard on worldwide broadcasts, PBS and Austrian television. He is the author of Singing in Czech :A Guide to Czech Lyric Diction and Vocal Repertoire (Scarecrow Press, 2001).

Kapralova

Vitezslava Kapralova (1915–1940) began composing at the age of nine; at 15 she entered the Brno Conservatory where she studied composition. She graduated with an award winning Piano Concerto that she conducted herself. In 1935 she moved to Prague and continued her musical education at the Prague Conservatory.

In 1937, she received a scholarship to study in France, at the Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris and became a pupil of Charles Munch for two years, and briefly also of Nadia Boulanger in 1940. She also studied composition as a private student of the composer Bohuslav Martinu (1937-1939), whose Harpsichord Concerto she conducted in Paris (1938). Her award winning Military Sinfonietta, premiered in Prague in 1937 by the Czech Philharmonic and conducted by the composer, opened the 1938 ISCM Festival in London. At this occasion, Kapralova conducted the work with the BBC Orchestra.

Following the German occupation of Czechoslovakia on March 15, 1939, Kapralova decided to stay in exile in France. In April 1940, she married the writer Jiri Mucha. Only two months later her marriage and musical career were cut short by her tragic death in Montpellier, reportedly from acute tuberculosis.