Prague Philharmonic Choir

The Prague Philharmonic Choir, which is entering its 89th season, was founded in 1935 by choirmaster and teacher Jan Kühn. Thus, it is the oldest Czech professional choir. However, the choir’s name also appears on leading foreign stages.

Currently it has been praised mostly for the interpretations of its oratory and cantata repertoire. Since 2007 the head of the choir has been its principal choirmaster and artistic director, Lukáš Vasilek. Lukáš Kozubík completes the choirmaster duo. Since 2023 the Prague Philharmonic Choir has been working with the ČEZ Group. The Group, as the general partner, sponsors the choir at home and foreign concerts and also focuses on supporting talented young singers and educational activities.

Under Lukáš Vasilek, the choir has built a position of a highly recognised partner of major orchestras. On the home stage it has been working for a long time mainly with the Czech Philharmonic and performs at its own choir concerts with the PKF – Prague Philharmonia.

On a global scale its musical partners include the Berlin Philharmonic and the Essen Philharmonic, the Vienna Symphony, the North German Radio Symphony Orchestra Hamburg or the Israeli Philharmonic.

The Prague Philharmonic Choir gains valuable experience from its work with top conductors who have recently been Semjon Byčkov, Jakub Hrůša, Sir Simon Rattle, Daniel Harding, Zubin Mehta or Christoph Eschenbach. It regularly performs at famous home music festivals such as Smetana’s Litomyšl, Prague Spring, Dvořák Prague or Prague Sounds, and in recent years it has been performing abroad as the choir in residence of the Bregenzer Festspiele opera festival.

During this year’s season the choir will appear at four of its own choir concerts. Their staging is focused mainly on challenging and less well-known works of its a cappella or instrumentally accompanied choral repertoire. It will traditionally perform at concerts organised by Prague orchestras, but will also travel to Ostrava for example. Its foreign trips will take it to Dresden, Baden-Baden, Hamburg and Bregenz.

Besides its regular concert performances, the Prague Philharmonic Choir is engaged in educational projects. It is preparing a cycle of educational concerts for young audiences for schools and for families with children. Their programme places emphasis on entertainment and children’s active involvement. The Prague Philharmonic Choir Academy is organised for choral singing students enabling young singers to gain practical experience from singing in a professional ensemble, participate in big music projects and gain experience from working with leading artists.

Besides its regular concert performances, the Prague Philharmonic Choir is engaged in educational projects. It is preparing a cycle of educational concerts for young audiences for schools and for families with children. Their programme places emphasis on entertainment and children’s active involvement. The Prague Philharmonic Choir Academy is organised for choral singing students enabling young singers to gain practical experience from singing in a professional ensemble, participate in big music projects and gain experience from working with leading artists.

The vocal quality of the choir is documented among others by an extensive archive of recordings which grows with each season. The discography contains albums released by Pentatone, Decca Classics, Sony Classical or Supraphon. The Prague Philharmonic Choir has been awarded for its recording work and received several awards, specifically from the British magazines Gramophone and BBC Music Magazine or the prestigious Diapasond’Or de l’Annèe award. The first gramophone recording was made in 1952 with conductor Václav Talich of Dvořák’s oratorio Stabat Mater, and the most recently released CD dates to 2023 of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 with the Czech Philharmonic and Semjon Byčkov.

The Prague Philharmonic Choir is holder of the Classic Prague Awards 2018 for Best Vocal Concert, Czech Television Awards – Classic Prague Award and in 2022 became the laureate of the Antonín Dvořák Prize for exceptional artistic merit in promoting and popularising Czech classical music.