Having just returned from a week--a month would have been better--among
the pointed turrets, cobblestones, cafes and concert venues of Prague,
I'd like to share my impressions of the state of classical music in
that city.

For a start, it is hard to pass certain places in the old town, castle,
or hotel desks without flyers or tickets for classical concerts being
thrust on one.  This is particularly true of the daily short concerts
at the Art nouveau style Municipal House (where the Czech Republic was
declared in 1918, and restored relatively recently at a cost of a billion
Czech Koruna--about $37,500,000), but also for The Marriage of Figaro
at the Estates Theatre, where Mozart conducted it, or the St. George
Basilica for an afternoon concert that, as it happens, we were surprised
to hear and see part of the concluding work (Dvorak's String Serenade)
through a glass door separating the basilica from the adjoining art
museum housing Czech baroque and mannerist art, which we had already
paid to enter.

Vaclav Havel's musical preference may be rock, and the cafes may have
background music resembling French torch songs but, as the 4th edition
of Frommer's guide to Prague says, "Prague's longest entertainment
tradition is, of course, classical music." It's that "of course" that
gets you!  Encouraging.  (Prague's population is 1,200,000, more than a
tenth of the national population.)

Aside from the ubiquity of concert venues, which include chamber music
in churches--there was a fair amount of Martinu being played in such
places--the number of large monumental halls is striking.  Opera is
performed regularly in the National Theater, the State Opera and the
Estates Theater.  Symphonic music is to be had at the Rudolfinum (near
the Charles University, on the Vltava River, as is the National Theater,
and with an immensely high ceiling, a large organ, big pillars but a
rather small platform for a full orchestra), and the Municipal House's
Smetana Hall.  Prague has three orchestras.  On Monday and Friday last
week there were no fewer than three and four musical events I would have
liked to attend--not to mention wanting to see the performance halls
themselves.

So with all this abundance, what did I do?  What I most wanted to hear
was a concert in the Rudolfinum (Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, cond.
Vladimir Valek) featuring Suk's Symphony in E Major, op. 14, which
I had never heard.  Also on the program was Mahler's Ruckert Lieder;
and Petr Eben's symphonic movement "Vox Clamantis." Eben (b.  1929),
"internationally the most respected living Czech composer, is close to
Olivier Messiaen," according to the program notes.  Vox Clamantis featured
prominently three trumpets, first muted then not, playing from an elevated
position near the organ where a chorus would stand, as well as the
briefest of solos by a baritone voice.  (No idea what the words meant,
unfoprtunately.) The baritone, Ivan Kusnjer also sang the Mahler.  Since
I am used to hearing this work sung by a female voice, I thought his
performance overpowered the instruments, but he sang well.  The Suk is
a wortk I am ready to hear again, but I don't have much to say about it
on a single hearing.  It does not have the intensity of his better-known
Asrael Symphony, which is OK. One detail that did strike me was a rather
unusual string attack at the beginning of the third movement.

Besides the symphonic concert, I went to the State Opera twice (partly
a matter of convenience in acquiring tickets since it was one of the
first places I found myself walking on Monday morning.  For that evening
(Monday is not a dark night in Prague) I got box seats on the third tier
for a ballet evening, at the amazing price of somewhat less than $4.00
a seat.  This is the only time I have ever been in a box seat in my whole
life.  I think there was a day of performance special but, even so,
tickets there have to be heavily subsidized.  (The prices of open face
sandwiches, wine and champagne before the perfoenmance and during
intermission were also amazingly low.) There were four ballets, with one
intermission, three with music by Jan Muchow, Vlastimil Smida, and Klement
Slavicky (his an oboe, clarinet and bassoon trio).  The choreography was
highly inventive and the dancing exhibited the most skillful put-downs
(that doesn't sound right, but I don't know the right term if not) of
ballerinas I've ever seen.  The final ballet was a farce dating from a
date (1977) halfway between the Prague Spring and the Velvet Revolution.
Music by von Suppe.  Farce is extremely difficult to pull off successfully,
but this worked and was hilarious.  Very popular in Prague and called
"Stand-in" it featured a substitute dancer for an injured performer.
Not everything went well for him, as you might expect; even at the
curtain-call, he pitched head-first into the front row seats.  Flowers
were then presented to all those responsible except the dancers.

We also saw Nabucco, in Italian with Czech supertitles.  (The program,
by the way was in Czech, English, German, French and Italian--notably
not Russian.  Incidentally, my pathetically less-than-minimal Czech was
not needed at all in Prague; one look at me and waiters and clerks simply
spoke English; on a couple of occasions I got by with German or French;
three young French women near me in a cafe simply ordered in English.)
Nabucco is not an opera I knew, nor is Verdi a favorite of mine, but the
physical production was strikingly good, as was the singing.

The instrumental performances I heard were generally good, though not
outstanding.  I understand that many of the best players have left for
better pay elsewhere.

Jim Tobin