Josef Antonín Štěpán (1726–1797) : Sonata B flat major for harpsichord, PicŠ.20 (1771)
Leopold Koželuh (1747–1818) : Sonata E flat major for pianoforte, op.38 No.1 (1793)
Giedrė Lukšaitė Mrázková – fortepiano, harpsichord
     Flemish harpsichord after Andreas Ruckers from 1640, built by František Vyhnálek
     Fortepiano after Anton Walter from 1792 (Koželuh), built by Paul McNulty
     Fortepiano after Walter & Sohn from 1805 (Dusík), built by Paul McNulty

From Bohemia’s woods and fields to imperial salons. Stories of four masters of the keyboard.

When the 18th century saw rapid progress in symphony, chamber and keyboard music, Czech musicians were not only on the scene, but many of them were at the forefront of this process. During their lifetime, they enjoyed fame and recognition until their place was taken by geniuses who pushed musical impulses into new dimensions and dominated the world's stages. While the dust may have settled on their names, oblivion does not diminish the quality of their work. Without them, Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert and others would have had nothing to build on and nothing to get inspired by.

The four composers of this recording have made original contributions to the transformation of musical taste and style at a time when the fortepiano was gradually becoming a major solo instrument alongside the clavichord and harpsichord. They were among the leaders in their field, working in the highest circles: teaching princesses and future monarchs, befriending influential people. It almost sounds like a fairy tale, but their private and professional lives reflect the dynamics of the entire 18th century - influenced by wars, revolutions and religious schism.

The career of Josef Antonín Štěpán [Joseph Anton Steffan] (1726-1797) began dramatically. At the age of fourteen he fled from his native Kopidlno in eastern Bohemia to Vienna to escape military conscription during the wars for Austrian inheritance. With the help of the owner of the Kopidlno estate, Count František Jindřich Šlik, he studied with the best - František Ignác Tůma and most importantly Georg Christoph Wagenseil. He developed into an excellent pianist and a renowned composer. In 1766 he replaced Wagenseil as teacher of Maria Theresa's daughters - Marie Antoinette, the future Queen of France, and Marie Caroline, later Queen of Naples. The title of Maestro di Cembalo della Corte Imperiale and Wienna thus went to a Czech composer for the first time.

In the cosmopolitan, culturally vibrant Vienna he visited the salon of the court councillor and patron Franz von Greiner as a prominent musical personality and taught his daughter, the future famous writer Karoline Pichler. In the Enlightenment-oriented circles, the Czech composer met his peer Joseph Haydn as well as the generation younger Mozart and Salieri. Although he lost his sight at the age of 50, Štěpán left behind more than 80 pieces for solo piano and over 40 piano concertos. As the son of a local cantor and musician, he did not forget his native region and family origins, leaving most of his wealth to the school in Kopidlno.

One of the most interesting features of his work are the slow introductions or blending of elements of the Baroque suite with the sonata, which were quite unique at the time - the Sonata for harpsichord in B flat major Pic Š. 20 (1771) was written only twenty years after J. S. Bach's death, at a time when older musical forms were still reverberating. However, Štěpán managed to combine the past with the new ideals of classicism.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Štěpán was still respected; for example, the German musicologist Arnold Schering considered his concertos fresher than Haydn's. As for the composer's contemporaries, in 1781 the writer and bookseller Christoph Friedrich Nikolai noted that Viennese piano music lovers respected only two names: Štěpán and Koželuh.

Leopold Koželuh [Leopold Kozeluch] (1747-1818) came to the centre of the Habsburg monarchy at the age of 31 and quickly became a sought-after celebrity. By that time he was already an accomplished composer, having studied in Prague with his cousin, the excellent organist Jan Antonín, and with the renowned piano teacher František Xaver Dušek [Duschek]. It was not only Vienna that he conquered. When in 1781 the Archbishop of Salzburg wanted to drag him to the court orchestra to fill the vacancy left by Mozart, he could afford to refuse.

As his reputation grew, Koželuh gained influence: he married into an aristocratic family, founded a thriving music publishing house, was modern in his promotion of the fortepiano, and his famous pupils promoted his compositions throughout Europe - his music was performed in London conducted by Joseph Haydn, among others. When he became the teacher of Archduchess Elisabeth von Württemberg, later wife of Emperor Francis II, he made his way to the imperial court, where he served as chamber Kapellmeister and court composer from 1792. He also taught Marie Louise, later Napoleon's wife. The famous English historian Charles Burney described his style as natural, graceful and original, free from imitation.

But even an inventive composer, which Koželuh undoubtedly was, can go out of fashion... However, without his 22 keyboard concertos and nearly 50 solo sonatas we would have lost an important part of the mosaic of keyboard literature of the second half of the 18th century, as demonstrated by the Piano Sonata in E flat major, Op.38 No.1 (1793).

A completely different story is delivered by Jiří Antonín Benda [Georg Anton Benda] (1722-1796), a representative of composers who left the Czech lands for religious reasons. He came from a widespread family, to which the important musical family of Brixi was connected by marriage. This lineage stretches as far as the 20th century, and includes, for example, the conductor Hans von Benda (1888-1972), former artistic director of the Berlin Philharmonic during the era of Wilhelm Furtwängler.

Jiří Antonín Benda became famous for his melodramas, but he also excelled as a pianist and violinist. He was the author of the Six Sonatas for harpsichord (Sei Sonate per il Cembalo Solo, 1757) and the extensive six-volume Collection of Various Piano and Vocal Pieces for Experienced and Inexperienced Players (Sammlung vermischter Clavier - und Gesangstücke für geübte und ungeübte Spieler, 1780-1787). They show inspiration from the works of C. Ph. E. Bach and his masterly grasp of the so-called emotional style (Empfindsamer Stil). Benda knew the son of the famous Johann Sebastian Bach personally - for several years they were colleagues in the orchestra of King Frederick II of Prussia. He spent several years with Frederick the Great in Potsdam and Berlin.

Benda composed his keyboard sonatas for harpsichord, fortepiano as well as clavichord. They were probably written at the time when Benda held a bandleader post at the court of Duke Frederick III. of Gotha, where he had at his disposal an exceptionally fine keyboard instrument. Interestingly, Benda's compositions were also played in the Mozart family - Wolfgang writes of him with respect, and the names of both Mozarts, Leopold and Wolfgang, are among the subscribers to the above mentioned piano collection.

Although the six sonatinas on this recording are chamber in scope, each of them represents a small musical story - with subtle expression and refined form. They reflect the composer's knowledge of Italian opera, the North German instrumental school, the Sturm und Drang aesthetic, and the musical tradition of northern Bohemia, where Benda grew up.

"In proficiency, in confidence, in overcoming the greatest difficulties, he was hardly surpassed by any other pianist, (...) in expression, soulfulness and subtlety by no one else," wrote the important 19th century music magazine Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung about Jan Ladislav Dusík [Jan Ladislav Dussek] (1760-1812). The composer was even referred to as a "musical prophet" - the originality and creative exuberance of his compositions, especially from the last twenty years of his life, seem to be ahead of their time or beyond it. He offered unusual harmonies, strong romantic emotions and highly distinctive melodies. His music was just like his life - intense and full of twists and turns. Out of the "four musketeers" of this recording, he is the d'Artagnan.

Dusík received his early musical education from his father, a regenschori in Čáslav, Central Bohemia, and perhaps also in Hamburg where he spent a short time with Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. He began composing at the age of twenty. During his short life he managed to travel around Europe, write over a hundred chamber works, almost twenty piano concertos, around forty piano sonatas, a piano textbook, an opera, a mass, and several vocal pieces - and also to find himself in mortal danger on more than one occasion.

He fled from Russia to Lithuania on suspicion of conspiracy against Catherine the Great, then tutored the wife of his patron Prince Karol Stanislaw Radziwill, one of the richest magnates in Poland-Lithuania, before arousing his jealousy two years later... He fled from Paris to escape the Revolution - because he was Queen Marie Antoinette's favorite, and from London to Prussia to escape his creditors after the bankruptcy of his own music publishing house. The Czech composer spent his last five years in Paris. His last public performance took place on 29 October 1810, the year when two later piano masters, Chopin and Schumann, were born.

His eleven years in London (1789-1800) are among the most fruitful, and the Piano Sonata in G major, Op.35 No.2, was written during this period. He often performed with Joseph Haydn, who was so enchanted by him that the famous "papá" wrote to Dusík's father in Čáslav: "...you have in your son one of the most honest, moral and distinguished men in music..."

At the same time Dusík worked on innovations to the instrument, collaborating with piano maker John Broadwood (1732-1812), who at his insistence expanded the range of the keyboard. According to contemporary sources, Dusík can also be credited with a practical first: for acoustic reasons, he was the first one to turn the piano sideways to the audience, as it is common today - until then the performers used to sit facing the listeners.

With Giedrė Lukšaitė Mrázková about forgotten gems of Czech music

Why did you decide to dedicate your new recording to sonatas by Czech composers of the second half of the 18th century?

It has to do with my long-standing interest in the period of transition from harpsichord to fortepiano. When I started to explore this sometime after 2000, it was Czech composers who came my way. At the time, I was struck by what wonderful, magnificent music they were writing - and at the same time, that it was hardly played at all.

Did you choose four different authors to show a certain diversity of approach?

Yes, I wanted to show different types of composers who generally approached the instrument and expression differently. Although they all worked in a certain contemporary atmosphere, with a similar stock of "musical information", each of them had a distinctive style. Their work also shows the influence of the affect theory of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, with whom some of them were personally acquainted. Thanks to them, we can get an idea of what solo works for keyboard instruments looked like in the late 18th century. At the same time, their music is a wonderful example of how they paved the way for Beethoven, Schubert and Chopin. And what is important for me - they were from the Czech lands, where many capable composers came from at that time. I have chosen four of them because, although they were famous in their time, they are almost unknown today, with the exception of Benda. And yet each of them surprises you with something. Without planning it in advance, when I play them I notice that I interpret them with different energy - as if I intuitively tuned in to each of them differently.

Let's look at two authors you have been working on intensively for almost twenty years - Josef Antonín Štěpán and Leopold Koželuh. You have recorded over fifty sonatas by them. How do you approach them today?

I dare say that I have really understood them during that time and found my interpretative key to them. Štěpán is extremely close to me with his energy. His music also reflects his character, which I try to convey in the best possible way: beautiful, healthy humour, good-heartedness, optimism, pleasant masculine energy. In composition, he was above all a pragmatist - he uses the full range of the instrument, and he is amazing at playing with colour and dynamics. Sometimes when you listen to him you wonder if it is not Beethoven. It is also interesting to me that he often reaches for musical-rhetorical figures.

Leopold Koželuh is sometimes considered the author of lighter music for amateurs. Do you agree with that?

Not at all. In the second half of the 18th century, almost all composers wrote for amateurs and often set high demands on them. Even many of Beethoven's sonatas were intended for them, and yet none of us would consider them weak compositions.

Kozeluh stands out in particular for his beautiful melodies in the slow movements. The fast ones can come across as a little 'chatty', but they have a momentum and they flow nicely, which I like about them. I definitely consider Koželuh to be Mr. Composer.

How would you characterize Jiří Antonín Benda?

The sonatinas I have chosen appeal to me because I can feel in them the work with words, agogics and abrupt changes of mood. I also hear in them the connection to the sound of the clavichord, which means really subtle nuances and expressive variety.

And finally, Dusík - an author who cannot be resisted.

Yes, Dusik has completely charmed me! In his music I feel a complete inner openness. Everywhere he came, he absorbed new musical "information" - both those that already existed as well as those that were just being born. The sonata I have chosen for this recording is a real discovery for me. I can hear in it orchestral thinking, amazing contrasts and glimpses of the mastery that was then fully developed by Schubert or Beethoven - only that Dusík had written it first! Moreover, it plays well. He was a brilliant pianist and knew how to write for the instrument.

It is clear from your narration that this music means more to you than just your favourite repertoire.

Definitely. It fascinates me with its energy, optimism, playfulness, tenderness and purity. In all four composers, I can undoubtedly hear the melody of Czech folk songs. When I play these pieces, I feel that I can really dwell in them and enjoy them. I dare say this is my home.

[The text was written and the questions were asked by Dina Šnejdarová]

  Další nahrávka Giedrė Lukšaitė Mrázková pro label Arta Music.

Giedrė Lukšaitė Mrázková was born in Lithuania. She graduated in piano and organ from the Lithuanian Academy of Music in Vilnius, completed a postgraduate course in organ at the P. I. Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow and did an internship in organ and a postgraduate course in harpsichord at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. Giedrė Lukšaitė Mrázková has been teaching artists in piano, organ and harpsichord for 55 years. For more than 30 years she was the head of the harpsichord department at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. Since 2023 she has been an emeritus professor.

Her diverse activity in the field of solo (organ, harpsichord, fortepiano) and chamber music is illustrated by over 1000 concerts in Europe and Japan, as well as recordings for Czech Radio. The focus of these recordings is Czech piano music of the 18th and 20th centuries. Giedrė Lukšaitė Mrázková has also recorded twenty CDs for Czech, Lithuanian and Danish studios. Most of them were devoted to the instrumental works of J. S. Bach. The last CD is a recording of the second volume of Well-Tempered Clavier.

In 2001, Giedrė Lukšaitė Mrázková was awarded the Order of Prince Gediminas for her contribution to the Republic of Lithuania in the sphere of culture.