Arthur Honegger: Jeanne D'arc Au Bucher [CD]

Animal Music will release Arthur Honegger's dramatic oratorio Jeanne d'Arc au bucher (1935/1944). Lukas Vasilek conducts the Czech Philharmonic, Prague Philharmonic Choir and the Prague Philharmonic Children's Choir. The cast is led by Audrey Bonnet as Jeanne d'Arc and Sebastien Dutrieux as Frere Dominique. This is the first recording since 1975 of Jeanne d'Arc au bucher made with the same orchestra and two choirs. The cast is completed by actors Jean-Baptiste Le Vaillant, Thomas Gendronneau and Anna John Schmidtmajerova, and singers Susanne Bernhard, Veronika Rovna, Anna Goryachova, Kyle van Schoonhoven, Dovlet Nurgeldiyev and Zachary Altman. Jirí Chvala and Petr Louženský are the choirmasters of the Prague Philharmonic Children's Choir. The album is released on CD with a comprehensive booklet in a trilingual English-French-Czech version. The connections between the composer, Jeanne d'Arc au bucher and forces involved in this recording are closely interwoven and, at times, charged with historical and emotional resonance. In 1949, Honegger himself conducted the Prague Philharmonic Choir in the Czech premiere of his Le Roi David (1921). In 1970, the Czech Philharmonic, conducted by Vaclav Neumann, performed Jeanne d'Arc au bucher to mark the first anniversary of the death of Jan Palach, the Czech student who set himself on fire in protest against the 1968 Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia. Five years later, in 1975, the Czech Philharmonic, Prague Philharmonic Choir, and Prague Philharmonic Children's Choir, under Serge Baudo, recorded Jeanne d'Arc au bucher for Supraphon. This new recording by Animal Music is based on live performances given between 13-15 February 2025 at the Rudolfinum in Prague. Honegger's oratorio was chosen by Lukas Vasilek to mark both his debut conducting the Czech Philharmonic and the 55th anniversary of the work's performance at the Rudolfinum in 1970. Reviewing the first of the three 2025 concerts, Bachtrack described it as 'a performance for the ages' and Klasika Plus said 'Vasilek's interpretation was outstanding the Prague Philharmonic Choir delivered one perfectly blended wave of sound after another, reaffirming it's place among the European elite.' Principal Conductor and Artistic Director of the Prague Philharmonic Choir since 2007, Lukas Vasilek is also founder of the Martinu Voices, with whom he released his first album on Animal Music in 2023 featuring choral works by Benjamin Britten (ANI124-2) which went onto win the Czech Music Academy Award for Best Classical Recording of the Year. In recent years, Vasilek has also been active in his original field of orchestral conducting. His interpretation of Benjamin Britten's War Requiem performed in February 2023 by the Prague Philharmonic Choir, in collaboration with the Prague Philharmonia, the Czech Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra and members of the Kyiv Symphony Orchestra was a resounding success. Britten's work, along with other major vocal-symphonic works, such as Honegger's Le Roi David and Poulenc's Gloria and Stabat Mater, has become a mainstay of Vasilek's concert repertoire with the Prague Philharmonic Choir.