Songs Tuned to Harp

The eminent Czech soprano Irena Troupová gained international renown through the historically-based interpretation of early music, which she devoted herself to already during her musicology studies at Charles University in Prague. She studied singing under Terezie Blumová in Prague, later under M. Corelli in Berlin. She collaborated with the ensemble Musica Antiqua Praha led by Pavel Klikar, creating a string of recordings and exceptionally successful concerts both at home and abroad. At that time she also found an interest in contemporary music and has worked with the likes of Petr Eben, Svatopluk Havelka and others. After her studies she performed mainly in Germany, but the demand for her talent also grew rapidly in other countries (England, Italy, Denmark, Sweden, France, Switzerland, Poland). She worked with many different ensembles (e.g. Orpheon Consort, Johann-Rosenmüller-Ensemble, Schütz-Akademie, Capella Sagittariana, Dresdener Barockorchester, Lautten-Compagney, Kievskaya Kamerata) and conductors (Howard Arman, Joshua Rifkin, Frieder Bernius, Thomas Hengelbrock, Florian Heyerick, Vojtěch Spurný and others). This cooperation brought about a number of recordings. Irena Troupová was a regular participant in the concert programmes of the State Opera in Berlin and the Berlin Symphony Orchestra. Among the most interesting opera productions that she took part in during her German period, a mention should be made of Monteverdi’s Orfeo headed by Joshua Rifkin in Basel, Freiburg and Mulhouse (the roles of Musica and Proserpine), of the modern premiere of H.I.F. Biber’s opera Arminius in Salzburg (later released on CD), but also of Le malade imaginaire of M.-A. Charpentier and J.-B. Lully in Berlin.

Irena Troupová is a frequent guest singer at international music festivals, including Tage der alten Musik Herne, Pražské jaro (Prague Spring), Festival de musique baroque Caen, Holland-festival oudemuziek Utrecht, Bach-Festival Sumy and Concenturs Moraviae, to name a few.

Irena’s early music projects over recent years include programmes in cooperation with the Comic Opera (Berlin), German radio NDR (Norddeutscher Rundfunk) and Belgian conductor Florian Heyerik (Salto vocale – fragments from the operas of G. Ph. Telemann), with Musica Florea (operatic projects – Ch. W. Gluck: La Danza, G. F. Händel: Terpsicore), Ensemble Tourbillon, Barbara M. Willi, Jaroslav Tůma, Monika Knoblochová, Petra Matějová and others. More recently, she has been working closely with the international ensemble Orpheon; they have toured Spain, Austria and France together and have also recorded an album, Marin Marais and his friends. She has collaborated with members of the Staatskapelle Berlin, joining in a fascinating project connecting the musicality of the Baroque with that of the Modern: Musik im Dialog – Claudio Monteverdi und Luciano Berio, a concert cycle in the State Opera in Berlin which was followed by a programme from the works of J. S. Bach, Bach – reloaded.

Irena Troupová has gradually extended her scope to include Romantic and Modern lyrical and operatic works. She has performed songs from German and French Romanticism a number of times at the concerts of the Prague Symphony Orchestra and the Czech Philharmonic (the early songs of Gustav Mahler). She has also given voice to Jan Dušek’s orchestral songs Chalomet yehudi’im together with Orchestra BERG for the EBU and the songs of Miloš Štědroň for Czech Radio.

Lately, she has focused her attention on the music of the 20th and 21st century; she recorded Bohuslav Martinů’s opera Le jour de bonté (The Day of Charity) for Arco Diva. She has performed the works of Marek Kopelent (the Singspiel Musica, the cantata Agnus Dei at Prague Spring 2012) – she joined the Prague Philharmonia conducted by Jakub Hrůša to render the premiere of Kopelent’s Pozdní sběr (Late Harvest). She is also actively interested in the music of interwar authors – Viktor Ullmann, Erwin Schulhoff, Norbert von Hannenheim, Philip Herschkowitz – performing their works to international audiences and recording a number of their compositions for Czech Radio and Deutschlandfunk. Irena Troupová is also greatly valued as a tutor of early music, teaching at the Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts and Masaryk University in Brno, and in courses both in the Czech Republic and abroad. She is a co-founder of the Lieder Company association.

Irena Troupová is a co-founder of the Lieder Company.

https://www.troupova.com

In his early youth Ondřej Holub went through Kühn’s children’s choir and the Pueri gaudentes boys’ choir, thanks to which he became a child soloist of the Prague State Opera in a production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute. He studied classical singing privately with Prof. Lenka Pištěcká, while studying at the Prague Conservatory with Prof. Valentin Prolat and later developed his singing skills with Prof. Jiří Kotouč.

Since 2019 he has been collaborating with the internationally renowned Collegium 1704, where he performs as a soloist as a soloist and ensemble singer, he also regularly collaborates with Ensemble Damian, a historically informed interpretation of Baroque opera. As a soloist he regularly collaborates with a number of ensembles and orchestras (Prague Symphony Orchestra FOK, Hradec Králové Philharmonic, South Bohemian Chamber Philharmonic, etc. He is also an ensemble singer with most of the leading domestic early music ensembles – Schola Gregoriana Pragensis, Collegium Marianum, Cappella Mariana, Ensemble Inégal, Czech Ensemble Baroque, Victoria Ensemble, Musica Florea, with whom he regularly participates in prestigious domestic and international festivals.

From 2013-2019 he was a member of the vocal ensemble Martinů Voices, which ranks among the elite performers of 20th and 21st century music. In 2007, he founded the male vocal quintet Rudolfvoice with former members of the Pueri Gaudentes choir, with whom he performed at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. He also occasionally collaborates with the Prague Philharmonic Choir, with whom he performed Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 at New York’s Carnegie Hall on the centenary of the founding of Czechoslovakia.

Lydia Härtelová, solo harpist of the Czech Radio Symphony Orchestra, first took up piano as a child (she participated in the Concertino Praga competition as a pianist), and from the age of 14 she took up the harp. Here She studied harp at the Prague Conservatory with prof. Libuše Váchalová and at the Music Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts with doc. Karel Patras. While still a student she was engaged in the Musica Bohemica ensemble, then she worked for a season and a half as a solo harpist at the Smetana Theatre (State Opera) in Prague, before being accepted by the Czechoslovak (now Czech) Radio Symphony Orchestra following a successful audition. Prague. She recorded seventy solo and chamber recordings for the Czech Radio (e.g. concertos by W. A. Mozart, J. G. Albrechtsberger, C. Reinecke, R. M. Glier, A. Mosolov, F. Martin, P. Hindemith, Z. Lukáš, Jar. Krčka, M. Malecki, Debussy’s Dances), she has also recorded for Radio Munich and for the music publishers Supraphon, Panton, ECM, Ligia digital, MusicVars, Navona Records and NP Records.

Since 2012 he has been teaching harp at the Prague Conservatory. She has been invited to join the juries of harp competitions. In 2019 she was the chair of the international jury of the Concertino Praga radio competition.

She is a member of the chamber ensembles Trio cantabile and Trigonum musicum.

http://www.hartelova.cz/