Interview with conductor Jan Kučera

Two works on today’s programme aren’t performed very often. Is this an advantage for the conductor?

I’d say that the chief advantage is the opportunity to draw the public’s attention to high-quality, superb music which hasn’t had the chance to become better known to a wider spectrum of music-lovers. There are all sorts of factors which determine whether this is going to happen or not. Some works are justifiably forgotten, and some only gain prominence long after the composer’s death. I’m delighted to have the opportunity today to give a concert performance of Debussy’s somewhat neglected ballet score for our subscription audience as well.

In the case of Glazunov, I presume that this was the soloist’s choice. But where did you discover Debussy’s La boîte à joujoux (The Box of Toys)?


In 2005 I was very taken by a children’s ballet corps from Toyama in Japan who wanted to organise a performance in the Estates Theatre showing examples of Japanese dance. The programme also included Debussy’s ballet, which was about half an hour long. Within a very short time we got everything arranged, we got an orchestra together with various friends of mine and, after a single rehearsal, the performance went ahead. My main task was to keep to the tempo of the recording which the children had used while learning the entire choreography of the piece. Children are always enchanting on stage, but this time they were truly magical. Approximately fifty young dancers, some very small, ranging from the ages of five to fifteen, created a very poignant story about puppets, incorporating those typically precise Japanese moves. I fell in love with the music. It’s fragile, just like the fragile memory of our first toys, of our childhood. I should note here that Debussy only wrote his instrumentation for the first 93 bars of the score; the remainder was completed using the piano version written by his friend, the composer and conductor André Caplet. Despite the relatively large number of instruments required, the piece is orchestrated with great restraint, and the music progresses in quieter dynamics, as if we were trying not to frighten the memory away with some embarrassingly mundane disruptive element. Thus the energetic passages are all the more surprising. It would be wonderful if Debussy’s music evoked the same memories in the audience of their childhood box of toys, of a time when imagination knew no bounds.

Let’s step down from the conductor’s rostrum for a moment. How is your composition work going? Have you finished your opera Rudá Marie (Red Marie)?


I’ve so far completed the piano score. It’s a comic chamber opera based on the radio series The Tlučhoř Family, which Czech comedians Oldřich Kaiser and Jiří Lábus have been writing for almost twenty years. Next comes the instrumentation. I’ve opted for an entirely free compositional approach, I’m not working to a tight deadline, I’m taking a lot of trouble over the opera, “fiddling around” with it. Though one of the arias has already been performed, with the excellent soprano Zuzana Marková, during a special production entitled “The Tlučhoř Family Live”. We’ll see if any of our theatres takes an interest in my opera, which doesn’t have a single positive character in it…

At this year’s Prague Spring International Music Competition, young trumpeters will be performing a work written by you. You are an accomplished trumpet player yourself; are there technical aspects about it which are going to have them worried?

To say that I’m an accomplished trumpet player is a true exaggeration. You might say that of SOČR’s principal trumpet Marek Zvolánek! But I will have a little blow on it sometimes for my own enjoyment and for the enjoyment of others in the jazz club. For this year’s Prague Spring concert I tried to write a short piece in which candidates would have the chance to demonstrate both their technical maturity and their sense of cantilena. I gave it the title The Joker, so a certain humour and frivolity ought to come through. What the piece should demonstrate above all, however, is natural musicality, not mere precision performance. Being able to capture the spirit of a given work and a clear vision in its interpretation – I think these are more important, because that’s when it becomes music which has something to say to the audience.

At the festival you’ll be conducting the Hradec Králové Philharmonic in the third, final round of the trumpet competition. Can you explain to us what makes this kind of task unique?


It’s a great honour for me to be able to appear at this year’s Prague Spring competition, both as a composer and a conductor. We’ll be accompanying each finalist in works by Telemann and Jolivet. Because there’s huge interest in the competition, and apparently 105 applications were sent in to the secretariate from all over the world, there are two final concerts. So audiences will have a rare opportunity to discover that, when two musicians play the same thing, it’s not the same. I always love working with the Hradec Králové Philharmonic and together we’ll try to create the same conditions for everyone.


What’s your memory of taking part in the Prague Spring competition?


It was a wonderful experience in all aspects. I’d set my sights on a medal, but I was very pleased with my honourable mention.

Are you planning to take part in any other international competition?

Why not? The age limit for conducting competitions is generally 35 years. So it would be worth it to try, in the knowledge that the competition is fierce and that an invitation to take part just based on a DVD recording is success in itself.

You’ve been engaged as conductor of the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra since April 2008. Subscription concerts aside, what joint projects have particular importance for you?

We have a major project coming up for the St Wencelas Festivities in association with the Office of the Government of the CR, the National Film Archive, Czech Radio’s publishing house and Czech Television. At the beginning of May we’ll be recording the original score by Oskar Nedbal and Jaroslav Křička for the silent epic by director Jan Kolár from 1929, St Wenceslas, and we’ll be doing it straight to image using the old recording method, with our eyes on the stopwatch. The film will be issued on DVD with wonderful, newly recorded film music which the orchestra back then would have played live as the film was being screened. No-one’s familiar with it today, but it is exceptional nevertheless. What was the most costly film of its time, with Zdeněk Štěpánek playing the lead, was a flop with audiences due to the onset of the sound film era. I undertook the reconstruction and adaptation of the scores, which survived in a highly chaotic state, but they will see a new publication. On 28 September the entire film will be screened in the Rudolfinum, once again with live music, this time performed by SOČR! It constitutes 100 minutes of continuous music, a truly monumental tribute to the Czech duke. I adore early Czech films, so this project is really a pleasure to work on.