Biography
The Brno Chamber Orchestra is an ensemble emanating from the Brno State Philharmonic in the Czech Republic. Founded in 1977 the ensemble soon developed its own individual performance style and particular repertoire and found its place in the concert life of Brno, the cultural center of the Czech Moravian region, and also abroad, including Norway, Austria, Switzerland, Bulgaria, Sweden, Spain and Germany, where it has toured extensively. Its highly acclaimed American debut took place in February, 1996, when the Star-Ledger called it "one of the finest...the ensemble showed great expressively while maintaining razor precision." The Atlanta Journal raved that "the group's playing proved disciplined and attractively full-bodied."
The Orchestra has visited the festivals in Stockholm, Munich, Seville, Vienna, Constance and Schleissheim, and has collaborated with many renowned musicians, such as violinists Melkus and Lessing, French hornist Damm, trumpeter Boisson, Singer Richard Novak and pianist Michiko Otaki, with whom the first two compact disc recordings of the Brno Chamber Orchestra were made. Those recordings include works of Biber, Wassenaer, Stamic, Mozart (K. 415 and K. 449), Myslivecek, Martinu, and Janacek.
The ensemble's repertoire, much of which has been featured on recordings and television, is remarkable for the careful attention to the period styles and wide range in the contemporary sphere. A large part of the repertoire is made up of first performances of archive discoveries of music of Czech origin. This past holiday season the Orchestra performed newly-discovered vocal Christmas works by the Czech composer Jiri Linek (1725-1792), using parts reconstructed from manuscripts found in the Rajhrad cloister archives in southern Moravia by the Orchestra's leader, Jiri Mottl.
Artistic director Jiri Mottl (b. 1950) became the concertmaster of the Moravian Chamber Orchestra and a winner of the international violin competition in Lausanne (1971) while still a student at the Brno Conservatory. He studied violin at the Janacek Academy of Performing Arts, graduating in 1975; he returned later to the same institution to undertake serious intense study in conducting and received a second diploma in 1993. As a result of his research on and performance of historic music, he founded the Brno Chamber Orchestra in 1977 and became its principal violinist and artistic director, which he still is today. He was chosen to be Chief Editor of the New Janacek Critical Edition published by Baerenreiter-Supraphon, including the 1877 Suite for Strings featured on the recording and during the Brno Chamber Orchestra's American tour, as well as the 1878 Idyll, as work which was influenced by Dvorak's famous Serenade even more so than the earlier Suite.
Review Excerpts from the U.S. tour, 1998
for more information please contact:
Raymond Weiss Artist Management, Inc.
300 West 55th Street,
suite 5L
New York, New York 10019-5138
212-581-8478
rwam@concentric.net