2006

In 2006, the Society published a fourth volume of The Kapralova Society Journal. The spring issue featured an article on Ethel Smyth by Eugene Gates and the third part of Karla Hartl's annotated chronology of Kapralova's life. The fall issue published another of Dr. Gates' articles on the subject of women in music.

The event of the year was the discovery of an unknown orchestral song by Kapralova. The song Smutny vecer (Sad Evening), discovered by Karla Hartl in the Moravian Museum archives, was possibly intended for a collection of orchestral songs - an ambitious project that the composer later abandoned. Neither the song nor the collection has ever been mentioned by any of Kapralova's biographers. A mention of the latter appears in a list of works attached to a curriculum vitae that Kapralova drafted in February 1938 for the 1938 ISCM Festival brochure at the request of Alois Haba, Chairman of the Czech Section of the ISCM. Perhaps she was considering pairing Smutny vecer with her song Sbohem a satecek (Waving Farewell) which she started orchestrating around the same time she compiled the list for Haba.

Other key events of 2006 included a new recording of Kapralova's string quartet, performed by the Kapralova Quartet and released at the beginning of the year by ArcoDiva, one of the largest independent labels based in Prague. In summer, the Czech Radio Publishing House published, in a second edition, Kapralova's Partita for Piano and Strings, a remarkable neo-classical work from 1938. Finally, at the end of the year, Amos Editio published a critical edition of Sonata Appassionata, the first of Kapralova's three major compositions for solo piano and an important contribution to the twentieth-century Czech sonata repertoire. While the Society assisted both publications, it solely financed the latter.

The year 2006 was also a good year for the promotion of Kapralova's music. The composer's art songs and chamber music, particularly her string quartet, piano preludes, and violin works, were the most popular with both the performers and the broadcasters. The most frequently performed and broadcast orchestral work by Kapralova in 2006 was her Partita for Piano and Strings. Kapralova's music was also featured in two major radio series on women in music. The first, a 13-part series entitled First Ladies of Music, written and produced by Virginia Eskin for WFMT Chicago with the support of the Northeastern University, presented the composer in the company of Alma Mahler, Ilse Weber and Alma Rosé. The second, a six-part series Konsten att humla (The Art of the Bumblebee), written and produced by Birgitta Tollan for Sveriges Radio, featured Kapralova together with contemporary Czech composers Ivana Loudova and Sylvie Bodorova. In total, Kapralova's music was promoted in 13 radio broadcasts, and the participating radio stations included three national broadcasters: Czech Radio, Sveriges Radio, and CBC.

Kapralova's music was also programmed at several music festivals and conferences last year: the 2006 American String Teachers Association Conference in Kansas City in March, at the Jagthuis Festival in Nederhost den Berg in the Netherlands in May, at the Bay View Music Festival in Bay View, Michigan in July; and, at the 2006 Society of Composers National Conference at the University of Texas in September.

In 2006, several articles were written about the composer and appeared in three musicological journals: Acta Musicologica published and Opus Musicum re-printed Tereza Pavova's text "Vitezslava Kapralova jako Habova zacka?" and Kapralova Society Journal published Karla Hartl's research "Vitezslava Kapralova: A Life Chronology (Part III)." In addition to the original research mentioned above, The Heart of Europe featured Barbora Osvaldova's article "Vitezslava Kapralova: An Exceptional Composer," and Zpravy Spolecnosti Bohuslava Martinu published a text by Josef Kapral "Zena mezi peti linkami" and re-printed Alena Vesela's reminiscence "Vzpominka na Vitezslavu Kapralovou." Furthermore, Kapralova was mentioned in the article of Maria Klenova "Pratelstvi Cechu a Slovaku i za hranicemi," included in Ceska beseda, and in the text by Frantisek Smahel "Hudba v Ceske akademii ved a umeni," published by Akademicky bulletin. Finally, two favourable reviews of the new recording of Kapralova's string quartet appeared on MusicWeb (Rob Barnett) and in Opus Musicum (Martin Flasar).

women in music

In 2006, the Society made available two important texts on the subject of women and music in its journal. The article "The Woman Composer Question: Philosophical and Historical Perspectives" by Eugene Gates offers an excellent overview of pertinent issues and a comprehensive summary of musicological research on the subject. Another article by the same author, "Damned if you do and damned if you don't: Sexual aesthetics and the music of Dame Ethel Smyth," not only provides an insight into the struggle for recognition of one of the most important women artists at the turn of the twentieth-century but also adds substantially to scholarly research on the subject currently available online.

Our online resources on women in music continue to attract visitors to our website and receive endorsement from music libraries across North America, Australia, and Europe. Last year, our database of women composers was referred to by several weblogs, while our database of women conductors was recommended by de Volkskrant, a Dutch language online platform, and by San Francisco Classical Voice.

As in the previous years, we continued to design and host pages of women composers and conductors: last year, we designed an online presentation featuring American conductor Sylvia Alimena.

czech music in exile

This online initiative promotes music of sixteen Czech composers who left their native Czechoslovakia during the last century to escape either fascist or communist regimes. The project has been designed to preserve and protect the memory of these gifted composers. Last year, as part of the project, we created an online presentation for an exhibition curated by the Czech Museum of Music in Prague to mark the centenary of Jaroslav Jezek's birth.

acknowledgements

We wish to thank the following performers who promoted the composer's music in the Czech Republic, Germany, The Netherlands, Switzerland, and the United States in 2006 (in alphabetical order): Akademie Praha Chamber Orchestra, Arlene Alvarado, Ballet Ensemble of the National Theatre Brno, Renata Bialasova, Marja Bon, Sara Davis Buechner, Dana Buresova, Kevin Bylsma, Timothy Cheek, Kara Douglas, Virginia Eskin, Zuzana Fojtikova, Peter Geisselbrecht, Susan Gray, Michael Heaston, Caroline Helton, Pavel Hryzak, Milan Kanak, Kapralova Quartet, Laura Kobayashi, Milus Kotisova, Jan Kral, Ladislav Lakomy, Irene Maessen, Anette von Malek, Matthew McFarlin, Cornelia Mühlenhoff, Naomi Oliphant, Orchestra of the Janacek Opera, Elise Quagliata, San Jose Chamber Orchestra, Kira Slovacek, Lubomira Sonkova, Jana Stefackova, Sonya Szabo-Reynolds, Barbara Turner, Sabina Vajdova, and Daniel Weeks.

We would also like to thank our partners, friends, and all the others who assisted our efforts in 2006: American String Teachers Association, Amos Editio, ArcoDiva, Petr Bakla, Rob Barnett, Jindra Bartova, Bay View Music Festival, Michael Beckerman, Catherine Belyea, Natalia Borodin, Bowling Green State University, Per Brinchmann-Hansen, Brno Conservatory, Susan Campos, Ceska beseda, CBC 2, Timothy Cheek, Jan Cihak, Cincinati Public Library, Liane Curtis, Czech Museum of Music, Czech Radio 3 (Vltava), Czech Radio (D-dur), Czech Radio (Pilsen Studio), Czech Radio Publishing House, Lidmila Dankova, de Volkskrant, Erik Entwistle, Evangelische Diakonieschwesternschaft Herrenberg, Josée Faber-Feltes, Martin Flasar, Kveta Frankenbergerova, Jan Frei, Eugene Gates, Richard Hallas, Paul Hartl, Tereza Havelkova, Peter Herbert, Vladimira Hradecka, Josef Hrncir, Joaquin Huerta, Rafael Banús Irusta, Jagthuis Festival, Janacek Academy of Music, Olga Jezkova, JPR Ashland, Marketa Kabelkova, Josef Kapral, Maria Klenova, KWAX-FM, Ray Latham, Patricia Werner Leanse, Larry Lemer, Alexandra Lukasova, Jiri Macek, Bohuslav Martinu Society (Brno), Frantisek Matejka, Katerina Mayrova, Christiane Meininger, The Moravian Composers' Club, Moravian Museum of Brno, Jarmila Mrackova, MusicWeb, Veroslav Nemec, Northeastern University, Opus Musicum, Carolyn Paulin, Tereza Pavova, Pennsylvania State University, Geoff Piper, Ondrej Polisensky, Renata Purnochova, Radio Monalisa, Marvin Rosen, San Francisco Classical Voice, Zoja Seyckova, Mojmir Sobotka, Society of Composers, Sveriges Radio, The Heart of Europe, Greg Terian, Birgitta Tollan, University of Louisville School of Music, University of Michigan School of Music, University of Oregon, University of Tulsa, Marco del Vaglio, Eva Velicka, Jana Vojteskova, Hanus Weigl, WFMT Chicago, WGBH Boston, WPRB Princeton, Xavier University, Zuzana Zatloukalova, and ZUS Vitezslavy Kapralove.