Kapralova

[peterthekeys]

The subject of this week's "Composer of the Week" has been Vitezslava Kapralova - and for me, it's been one of the most fascinating series of programmes for some time. I'd never heard of her (which is galling as I tend to specialise in off-the-beaten-track composers.) She died in 1940 at the age of 25, from TB - making her almost the Czech equivalent of Lili Boulanger. I found her music very rewarding listening - obviously there are pervasive influences, but there's also a definite and strongly individual voice running through it: I will definitely try to get hold of more of her work (to hear and play.)

What did other people think?

There's a Kapralova society:

http://www.kapralova.org/index.htm

(apart from the information on Kapralova, they also have a database of women composers through history, which is very interesting.)

[peterthekeys]

Interesting that one of the first people in the UK to be impressed by Kapralova's music was Havergal Brian. After the 1938 ISCM festival, he wrote in Musical Opinion:

"The first work played and broadcast at the recent festival, a Military Sinfonietta by Miss Vitezslava Kapralova of Czechoslovakia, proved an amazing piece of orchestral writing; it was also of logical and well balanced design.”

[Serial_Apologist]

Yes, what a wonderful composer - and I too had not properly heard of her: just seen her name slotted in among a list of fellow compatriots of her time.

I hear her voice as somewhere between those of Jacques Ibert and Samuel Barber with touches of early Hindemith, and the Czech identity in no way strongly pushed, unlike in the cases of Novak or Martinu. Just now listening to the late concertino thinking how strange and movingly forlorn it is, mixed with a kind of resignation one finds in other late works, Bartok's Viola Concerto coming most to mind.