Spectators watch the performance of Dušan Vančura's Antiquartet on August 8, 2021 in the reconstructed courtyard of the state castle in Telč in Jihlavsk at the 39th edition of the multi-genre festival Holidays in Telč.
Prague – Soubor Antiquartet released the album Láska Tvá, named after the last song he wrote, on the occasion of the 85th birthday of its founder Dušan Vančura. This year, the group will celebrate ten years since its formation and is preparing a special anniversary concert associated with the launch of a new double album. The recording contains songs written for the Spirituál quintet, František Nedvěd or the original Antiquartet. The Antiquartet file announced it on its website.
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Double bass player, lyricist, music arranger and translator Vančura, a long-time member of the oldest Czechoslovak folk group Spirituál quintet, died on April 16, 2020 at the age of 82. In addition to his professional involvement in the Spiritual quintet, he also founded the Antiquartet in 2013. His 85th birthday fell on December 9 of last year.
“When he suddenly left us in 2020, we decided to follow his plan and carry on the message of his lyrics,” said singer Zuzana Vančurová, continuing her husband's legacy.
The CD group Antiquartet recorded the whole year and invited a number of guests to it. Among them, for example, Irena Budweiserová, Vojta Nedvěd, Kateřina Englichová or Ondřej Škoch. “We didn't just want a licensed selection of existing recordings, so we made twenty-six new images and added two more bonuses with the last recordings of Dušan's voice,” said Vančurová.
The producer of the Láska Tvá album Jiří Mašek pointed out they intentionally and respectfully left Vančura's original vocal arrangements in the compositions. “The arrangements of the musical accompaniment are completely new. The songs thus received a different, significantly more extensive form. I hope that it is the one that Dušan would have liked,” he added.
The Antiquartet's repertoire ranges across genres and centuries, ranging from classical four-part choral literature to folk songs and spirituals, which he sings mainly in his own arrangements and with his own texts. The group was founded by Vančura already in 1962, but the group's activities were soon interrupted, because after a short time some of the members moved to the Spiritual Quintet, where the founder himself later left. After fifty years of inactivity, the Antiquartet was resurrected in the fall of 2013. They released their first album, Everything Will Change Once, five years ago. The Antiquartet is currently performing in the composition of Zuzana Vančurová, Magdalena Jungwirthová, Tomáš Vávra and Jiří Mašek.
