The Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra was established in 1929 as the first professional symphony orchestra in Slovakia. The orchestra is currently led by conductor Ondrej Lenárd.

It has made a large number of recordings for labels including Opus, Supraphon, Naxos and Marco Polo.

In addition to regular season concerts, which feature works by Slovak composers, many of them as premieres, the orchestra has performed at concerts abroad, visiting Austria and Hungary, and touring in Europe, Japan and Korea. The orchestra has collaborated with renowned conductors such as Ľudovít Rajter, Ondrej Lenárd, Róbert Stankovský, Juraj Valčuha, Andrew Mogrelia, David Porcelijn, Vladimir Spivakov, Petr Altrichter and also with distinguished soloists.

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Photo: P. Kastl

Swiss-born conductor-composer Adriano lives in Zurich. As a musician he is mostly self-taught.

In the late 1970s he established himself as a specialist on Ottorino Respighi and he has conducted many other recordings of obscure or neglected symphonic repertoire. On Marco Polo/Naxos he initiated and recorded a series of 15 albums mainly of European film music composers, and created and directed a series of classical music videos. All of his recording projects, realised with orchestras in Moscow and Bratislava (49 albums, 21 of which featuring music by Swiss composers) have found wide recognition, and his commitment is totally dedicated and uncompromising. Between 2003 and 2017 he has recorded the complete orchestral works by Fritz Brun over 10 albums.

Adriano’s compositions include concertinos for piano, celesta, harpsichord and Ondes Martenot and an Obscure Saraband for organ, chimes, timpani and strings. His quintet for clarinet and strings is entitled Thoughts and Associations. His many instrumental adaptations include songs by Modest Mussorgsky (four cycles), Ottorino Respighi (five cycles), Johannes Brahms (Vier ernste Gesänge), Hugo Wolf, Othmar Schoeck, Fritz Brun, Jacques Ibert, Louis Gruenberg and Johann Strauss II. Ravel’s Tzigane (premiered in Halle’s Handel-Haus in 2013) also belongs to this list, as well as two different short chamber versions of Antonin Dvořák’s opera Rusalka, one of which ran for 53 performances in Krefeld’s and Monchengladbach’s theatres. Adriano’s successful arrangement of Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune for flute, clarinet, harp and string quartet (2008) has been performed in Switzerland, Germany, Italy and England by internationally renowned artists.

Swiss by nationality, Arthur Honegger was born and died in France, and was for a time associated with the group of Paris composers known as Les Six, although they were not bound together by ideals such as those of The Five in 19th-century Russia. Honegger was a prolific composer in many genres, writing for the theatre and concert hall, as well as for the cinema.

Orchestral Music

Honegger made some impression with his three ‘symphonic movements’, the first of a railway engine, Pacific 231, followed by Rugby, and the third with the simple title Mouvement symphonique. Works of particular interest include the delightful Piano Concertino, the Concerto da camera for flute, cor anglais and strings, and the charming Pastorale d’été, scored for chamber orchestra. The second and third of his five symphonies form a more or less regular part of present concert repertoire.

Film Music

Honegger’s music for the cinema includes a score for Abel Gance’s Napoléon and for Raymond Bernard’s 1934 adaptation of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, with Harry Baur as Jean Valjean.

Vocal and Choral Music

The dramatic psalm Le Roi David, completed in 1921, is an impressive work, originally theatrical in intention but transferred effectively to the concert hall as an oratorio. Honegger’s stage oratorio Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher (‘Joan of Arc at the Stake’), completed in 1935 and using a text by Paul Claudel, is an equally moving work, powerful in its use of the human voice whether in speech or song.