Prague Spring Festival – Gold Edition Vol. I

For this jubilee year, the festival has given itself a gift in the form of a CD with archival recordings of concerts from the first years of the festival, taken from the archives of Czech Radio. The album will be issued by the company Radioservis.

“While the technical quality of some of the recordings is dated, we are often surprised by the recordings’ high artistic standards, of which sometimes even perfect studio recordings cannot boast,” says the musicologist Bohuslav Vítek, who planned the album concept. As he further explained, “Each recording in this double album is also unique for its historical importance – the first appearance by Wolfgang Sawallisch at the Prague Spring Festival, the Czech premiere of Bohuslav Martinů’s First Symphony, and the conducting legend Erich Kleiber’s famous return to Prague.”

“One of the missions of the Radioservis label is to allow listeners to hear exclusive recordings from the radio archives,” adds the director of Radioservis Radim Kolek. “These two CDs feature the first releases on media of rare historical recordings from the first years of the festival, which will captivate and please every music lover. We are honoured to be part of the project, and we look forward to continuing this edition series.”

The CD cover and booklet were designed by the studio Dynamo Design. The clean lines are based on the timeless Prague Spring logo by the legendary Czech typographer František Muzika. They honour tradition while updating it with modern colours. The concept has been designed so that it can be followed in the years to come by a comprehensive series of editions, in which Prague Spring is planning to release not only historical recordings, but also important recordings from recent years.