Sylvie Bodorová belongs to the most significant Czech composers of the present day, whose music is regularly played both at home and abroad. After her studies first at the Bratislava Conservatory (piano and composition), then at the Janáček Academy of Performing Arts in Brno (composition) and the Music Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (postgraduate research), she became acquainted with up-to-date techniques during internships in Siena (with Franco Donatoni), Gdańsk, and Amsterdam (with Ton de Leeuw).

In the 1990s she worked as a teacher at university in Cincinnati and in other places around the USA. In 1996 she co-founded, alongside Luboš Fišer, Zdeněk Lukáš, and Otmar Mácha, the Quattro creative group. Between 1998 and 2003 she was active in the Nadace foundation and since 2010 she has been a member of the supervisory board at the Copyright Protection Association for Music Rights (OSA).

In the 1980s she wrote instrumental concertos: Tre canzoni da suonare for guitar and strings; Pontem video for organ, strings, and percussion and Plankty for viola and symphonic orchestra. In the field of chamber music she met with considerable success with her string quartet Terezin Ghetto Requiem with baritone solo (1998) – the composition was, among others, performed at the Wigmore Hall, during the "fall of the wall” celebrations at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin, at Warwick or Coventry. It was also recorded by Christòpheren Nomura in the USA. For the purpose of another performance in London, Bodorová composed the string quartet Shofarot (2000).

Her other significant commissioned works include the piano trio Megiddo (2001) for the Leamington festival; the double concerto Bern Concerto – Silberwolke (2004) for violin, viola, and strings for the Camerata Bern ensemble; an all-night oratorio Juda Maccabeus (2002) for the Prague Spring festival; an extensive oratorio Moses (2008) for an anniversary of the Smetana’s Litomyšl festival; or the piano concerto Come d’accordo (2005) for the Prague Philharmonia and Martin Kasík. Another important commission from abroad led to the composition of the choral cycle Amor tenet Omnia (2007) that was performed in Luxembourg and France.

In 2012 Bodorová wrote a large cycle of orchestral songs entitled Lingua angelorum for the baritone Thomas Hampson. For the same singer and the Wiener virtuosen she also arranged Dvořák’s Gypsy Songs, op. 55 (Cigánské melodie) that were successfully premiered in February 2013 at Musikverein in Vienna. In 2012 Sylvie Bodorová won the OSA award as the most successful author of modern classical music.

DL fileconvoy (21 days) | @320