Dreadful to think that while I was comfortably listening to Smetana’s stormy evocation ‘St John’s Rapids’ in ‘Vltava’ the actual river had burst its banks and Prague was in state of dire emergency.

Nikolaus Harnoncourt seems fascinated with all things Czech at the moment; he has already recorded a series of discs of Dvorak, from symphonies to Slavonic dances, and he now turns his attention to ...

The great Czech composer Bedřich Smetana would have been 195 today, and the birthday has been marked by a beautiful Google Doodle, set to the music of his Vltava. The piece is one of the six symphonic ...

Wallenstein's Camp Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra Petr Popelka, Conductor Hakon Jarl Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra Petr Popelka, Conductor String Quartet No. 1, 'From my life' Prague Radio Symphony ...

Frances Fyfield is in Prague to see both the handwritten score and some early sketches of Smetana's glorious Ma Vlast, My Land, including the famous evocation of the river Moldau. Show more When the ...

Every year on May 12, Smetana’s symphonic cycle My Country opens the Prague Spring Festival. All the major personalities of Czech cultural life gather in the Rudolfinum, the city’s main concert hall, ...

A new Czech recording of Smetana's cycle of fervently nationalistic symphonic poems is hardly news, but these performances, taken from the Prague Spring festival in May this year, do use a smaller ...

Frances Fyfield is in Prague to see both the handwritten score and some early sketches of Smetana's glorious Ma Vlast, My Land, including the famous evocation of the river Moldau. Show more When the ...