Czech Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra Pardubice
founded in 1969, is one of the Czech Republic’s top orchestras. The repertoire of this chamber orchestra includes a large number of compositions from barock era to contemporary music, including many cross-over and multigenre projects. The first principal conductor, Libor Pešek, quickly raised the orchestra to a high standard and the subsequent principal conductors included Libor Hlaváček, Petr Altrichter, Bohumil Kulínský, Petr Škvor, Róbert Stankovský, Leoš Svárovský and Marko Ivanović have kept a high artificial level of the orchestra. Current leader is Peter Feranec.

The Czech Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra Pardubice is valued for its stylistic interpretation and the extraordinary quality of its orchestral sound, and it is rightly ranked amongst the world's leading representatives of Czech musical culture. It often performs at Czech Republic’s most important festivals (including The Prague Spring International Festival, the Smetana’s Litomyšl or the International Český Krumlov Festival) and at many important venues in Europe in many prestigious concert halls, such as Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Salzburg Festspielhaus, Hercules Hall and Gasteig in Munich and the Musikverein in Vienna, Brucknerhaus in Linz, the Meistersingerhalle in Nuremberg and many others. Outside Europe the orchestra has played in Japan and has toured extensively around America.

The orchestra has collaborated with mandy leading world-renowned conductors (among others with Jiří Bělohlávek, Marco Armiliato, Marris Jansons and many others) and also a huge number of prominent soloists and choirs (Lazar Berman, Ivan Moravec, Eugen Indjic, Ivo Kahánek, Martin Kasík, Isabelle van Keulen, Vladimir Spivakov, Pavel Šporcl, Václav Hudeček, Gabriela Demeterová, Angel Romero, Jiří Bárta, Ludwig Güttler, Radek Baborák, Peter Damm, Herrmann Baumann, Helen Donath, Eva Urbanová, Dagmar Pecková, Czech Boys Choir Boni Pueri, Prague Philharmonic Choir, Czech Philharmonic Choir Brno) have performed with the orchestra. Apart from concert-giving the orchestra regularly engages in operatic and theatre projects and has dozens of successful discs to its credit on Naxos, ArcoDiva, Supraphon, Classico, Monitor-EMI, Amabile.

Michael Halász
Halász’s first engagement as a conductor was at the Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz, Munich, where, between 1972 and 1975, he directed all operetta productions. In 1975 he moved to Frankfurt to work as principal Kapellmeister with Christoph von Dohnányi, and here he conducted the most important works of the operatic repertoire. Many engagements as a guest conductor followed and in 1977 Dohnányi took him to the Staatsoper Hamburg as principal Kapellmeister. From 1978 to 1991 he was GMD (general music director) of the Hagen Opera House and in 1991 he took up the post of resident conductor at the Wiener Staatsoper for 20 years.

Michael Halász’s recordings for Naxos include ballets by Tchaikovsky, operatic excerpts of Wagner, symphonies by Beethoven, Schubert and Mahler, Rossini’s overtures, three volumes of Liszt’s symphonic poems (the latter critically acclaimed by the Penguin Guide), Fidelio (8.660070-71), Don Giovanni (8.660080-82), Le nozze di Figaro (8.660102-04), Die Zauberflöte (8.660030-31), and a pioneering recording of Schreker’s opera Der ferne Klang (8.660074-75). He has also recorded Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater and Orfeo (8.550766), Richard Strauss’s Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (8.553379), Rubinstein’s Don Quixote (8.555394) and, for Marco Polo, ballet music by Rubinstein (8.220451) and Schmidt’s Symphony No. 1 (8.223119).