Karel Urbánek News
Czech composer (1910-1995)
Commemorations 2025 (Death: Karel Urbánek)
- classical music, incidental music, liturgical music
- Czech Republic
- composer, choir director, conductor, university teacher, folklorist, teacher
Last update
2024-03-25
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2021-09-11 04:04:39
My first association to Dvorak is the composer’s New World Symphony without consciousness of his precious 2 “Pearls” for piano solo. These double your pleasure treasures derive from the collection, Young Czech Pianist, published in Prague by Urbanek with Dvorak describing them as “undemanding works aimed at children.” (The autograph went missing for many years but…
Kenneth Woods- A View From the Podium
2015-12-20 07:10:38
Explore the Score- Dvorak Stabat Mater
Antonin Dvorak- Stabat Mater, op. 8 Antonin Dvorak Dvorak began and completed his great setting of Jacopone da Todi’s 13th century poem Stabat Mater under a cloud of great personal tragedy. In 1875 his oldest daughter Josefa died only days after her birth. The grieving Dvorak turned to the ancient text of the Stabat Mater, seeing in its evocation of Mary’s grief at the death of her son a portrait of parental love and pain that he related to on a most personal level. He completed an outline of the entire work, but set it aside before finishing its orchestration and the working out of details to work on other pieces. Many scholars believe that the piece’s connection to Josefa made work on it too painful for Dvorak to complete the project at the time. However, tragedy struck again with even greater cruelty only two years later. […]
2013-05-01 23:09:00
The Haushofmeister’s Diary, Part 13: The Well-Dressed Piano-Dress
Backstage: The commedia troupe. With Audrey Luna (Zerbinetta) at right. So I have a dressing room. And also a dresser. Her name is Sue, and Ava Pine tells me that Sue helped to strap her into the harness that permitted her to fly when she sang the role of the Angel in Peter Eötvös’ Angels in America here at Fort Worth Opera a few years ago. This makes me feel as legitimate as possible. I must be an opera star, because I have a dresser. And she’s highly qualified. Now I’m wondering whether Sue can find that harness again. What this opera needs, I believe, is an appearance by the Haushofmeister during the “Ariadne” section. Toward the end, as Marjorie Owens and Corey Bix are singing their hearts out, I can fly out over the audience. People would love it, I know. I just have to […]
2013-05-01 00:35:00
The Haushofmeister’s Diary, Part 12: Our Very Own Sitzprobe
Show time! The Ariadne cast, orchestra, and Maestro Illick in Bass Hall. It’s happened to me so many times. Teresa Stratas is singing in a small, beautiful theater, before an orchestral ensemble led by a distinguished conductor. When the time comes, I take my place beside her. We sing — sometimes from the classic repertoire, and sometimes an entirely new work that we improvise on the spot. We are magnificent. The audience cheers. Weeping with gratitude, I fall into Teresa’s arms — — And then I wake up. Guardian angel: The auditorium ceiling in Bass Hall. The great curiosity, then, is that I did not wake up yesterday when I took my place at the center stage, looked down at the distinguished conductor Joe Illick and the massed forces of the Fort Worth Symphony, and joined a brilliant cast of singers in a performance of Richard […]
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