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This past Monday, I happened to appear before the Mayor and City Council members of the city of Lafayette (CA) as a result of a city proclamation recognizing a local chamber group here in Lafayette. The group was asked to play a short piece in connection with this recognition, but, as it turned out, only the violist from the group, Pamela Freund-Striplin, was able to appear at the time of the city council meeting, and she didn't want to play unaccompanied. So she asked me to accompany her in a piece, "For Erika", by a composer I'd never previously heard of, Geraldine Mucha. Mucha was born in Scotland, studied at the Royal Academy of Music, and lived most of her life in Prague. Pam told me that our performance on Monday was the US premiere of the work!It's a short, easy, and absolutely beautiful little piece, and I feel very fortunate to have participated in making this music better known. Geraldine Mucha was very modest about her own compositions, and, since her death, her son is now trying to get some wider ranging recognition for the music. According to Pam, Mucha would frequently dash off a composition for various musicians she knew in Prague. The musicians treasured these little gems, but no further publicity resulted.
I'm including a uTube link to a performance in Prague of the very piece we played. There's also a Wikipedia article about Mucha. This music really opened my ears to the fact that, perhaps, some very touching, worthwhile but unknown music still awaits discovery! As one of the uTube posters says, "This is pretty awesome!".
BTW, you may know the name, Mucha, because of Geraldine's father in law, the Art Nouveau painter, Alphonse Mucha - some of the albums on the Supraphon label feature his work. Here's a sample:
Edits: 03/02/17Follow Ups:
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And a sweet piece it is.
And this is why you rule despite making me wade through all the babe posts. I greatly enjoyed that piece and the Trio for Winds as much or even more.
Clearly influenced (in a good way) by the Central European modernists Hindemith, Nielsen, Janacek, Martinu, etc. Much more the Stravinsky branch of modernism than the Schoenberg branch. And an example of how modernism doesn't have to be scary.
My wife and I are big fans of his, actually, so your post caught my eye. We were in Paris a few years back for our honeymoon, and my eagle-eyed wife spotted a vase in an antique shop in a alley off the Place des Vosges, one of my favorite places in Paris. She talked about that vase the whole week - we saw it the first day we were there! Finally we went instead to find out the cost, and it was a reasonable 200 Euros - and it was by Mucha, who had a long association with Paris. We started to look into his work, and the following year went Prague, where we of course visited the Mucha Museum, and even better, the Slav Epic, a set of some 20 large canvasses that depict history of the Slavic peoples, was on display at the National Technical Museum - awesome to see these. We also visited Mucha's grave, in Slavin, which is the cemetery in the Castle Vysehrad - he is buried next to Smetana, by the way, and also Rafael Kubelik.
I have a whole different view of Ma Vlast now.
My wife and I missed all the art when we were in Prague. But that was almost 37 years ago, and the country was still behind the Iron Curtain! ;-) The next time we go to Europe, a return to Prague is definitely on our list - we know it must have changed a lot in the meantime!
BTW, Rick Steves had a segment about Mucha (the Mucha Museum and the Slav Epic collection) on his episode about Prague. It's treated in Rick's inimitable bourgeois manner (uTube link below)!
Funny comment about Rick Steves, by the way. Not a guy I would want to travel with. I mean, he is OK, and we have taken a few of his suggestions.....but, well, you know.
Good stuff, even if Steves is kind of a dork.
We were there in the 90's.
As a bonus, when we bought something at the Mucha Museum shop they offered us a bottle of wine.
I strongly suggest the $3 bottle rather than the $1 bottle.
Your best bet while in Prague is to ignore the wine and drink beer. I didn't find any memorable wine there.
who is Bass Clar w/SF Opera.
She used to to play there a lot too.
Good Folks!
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