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The voice of an artist: the life and music of Vitezslava Kapralova.

Article Excerpt
While in most composers' lives the first twenty-five years are generally a period of creative development, there have been artists who produced music at a very young age that is remarkably mature and refined in both form and technique. In the realm of Czech music, Vitezslava Kapralova represents such an artist. During her lifetime, Kapralova came to be regarded as one of the most promising composers of her generation. A highly accomplished musician despite her youth, she was also a trailblazer for women. She was the first woman to graduate from Brno State Conservatory's composition and conducting class, the first woman to receive the prestigious Smetana Award for composition, the first woman to lead the Czech Philharmonic, and one of the first women to conduct the BBC Orchestra. Among her teachers were some of the most prominent European composers and conductors of the time. (1)

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Vitezslava Kapralova was born on January 24, 1915 in Brno, the provincial capital of Moravia that was then still a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. She was an only child who grew up in a musical family: her mother, Vitezslava Kapralova (1890-1973), nee Uhlirova, was a classically trained singer; her father, Vaclav Kapral (1889-1947), was a composer, writer, music critic, and teacher who had studied with Janacek. Kapralova started composing at the age of nine, under the guidance of her father. At 15, she entered the Brno Conservatory where she studied composition with Vilem Petrzelka and conducting with Vilem Steinman and Zdenek Chalabala. Her creative output at the Conservatory included an early yet already accomplished piano cycle Five Pieces for Piano, two violin pieces Legend and Burlesque, a piano sonata So nata appassionata, and Piano Concerto in D minor, Kapralova's first work for large orchestra. In 1935, Kapralova graduated from the Brno Conservatory at the top of her class with the piano concerto that she conducted herself at its premiere in Brno. It was her first public appearance as conductor and she made quite an impression upon the curious, and at first skeptical, audience. (2) After the graduation, she spent the summer at her family retreat in the village of Tri Studne, where she sketched her first and only string quartet, an ingenious work that "blends something of the spirit of Janacek's Intimate Letters with a free chromaticism reminiscent of Berg's op. 3." (3)

In the fall of 1935 Kapralova moved to Prague, where she hoped to advance her technical skills at the Prague Conservatory. She was accepted into the prestigious masterclasses of the leading Czech composer Vitezslav Novak and the conductor Vaclav Talich, and her music was soon heard at the concerts of the two most important societies of contemporary music in Prague in the 1930s: Pritomnost and Umelecka Beseda. During her "Prague" period Kapralova experimented with impressionistic and expressionistic idioms and wrote some of her most striking music, including the critically acclaimed songs Forever and Waving Farewell, and her best known piano work April Preludes.

In June 1937 Kapralova graduated from the Prague Conservatory with a composition for large orchestra, the Military Sinfonietta. Composed at a time of political unrest in her homeland, it was chosen by the National Women's Council to be premiered at their annual gala concert in the presence of Edvard Benes, president of the Czechoslovak Republic, to whom the work was dedicated. The premiere took place at Lucerna Hall in...