Prague Philharmonic Choir

The choir was established in 1935 as an ensemble of the Czechoslovak Radio. What was originally an amateur body gradually developed into a professional choir and in 1953 it was integrated into the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra. Since 1990, the Prague Philharmonic Choir has been an independent music entity, currently led by the young conductor Lukáš Vasilek. It collaborates frequently with top Czech and foreign orchestras, e. g. the Czech Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Vienna Philharmonic, BBC Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. Regular cooperation with great conductors, namely Rafael Kubelík, Václav Neumann, Giuseppe Sinopoli, Sir Charles Mackerras, Claudio Abbado, Riccardo Muti, Pierre Boulez, Seiji Ozawa, Sir Simon Rattle and Jiří Bělohlávek among others, has helped the choir to achieve its outstanding artistic quality. It is a flexible vocal ensemble and its repertoire is very broad. In 2011 it participated in the new production of Wagner’s Parsifal at the National Theatre Prague as well as in performances of Mahler’s ‘Symphony of a Thousand’ in Prague, Hannover and Hamburg, performed at the Bregenz festival (opera Andrea Chénier), and collaborated with Zubin Mehta in Israel. In 2012, the choir performed the Czech premiere of Franz Schmidt’s Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln under Manfred Honeck, Dvořák’s The Spectre’s Bride at the Theater an der Wien and Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 2 ‘Lobgesang‘ under Christopher Hogwood at the Prague Spring Festival.