The Musica Florea ensemble was founded in 1992 by the cellist and conductor Marek Štryncl as one of the first serious initiatives in the field of stylistically-informed performance in the Czech Republic. Playing on original instruments or copies thereof, study of period sources and aesthetics, historical research, and creative revival of forgotten performing styles and methods have become indispensible and characteristic traits of the ensemble.
The ensemble’s repertoire includes instrumental chamber music, secular and sacred vocal-instrumental music, orchestral concertos, and monumental works in the genres of symphonic music, opera, and oratorio from the early Baroque to the twentieth century.
Musica Florea appears at important festivals of the world and collaborates with outstanding soloists and ensembles such as Magdaléna Kožená, Phillipe Jaroussky, Nancy Argenta, Veronique Gens, Paul Badura-Skoda, Susanne Rydén, the Orlando Consort, Les Pages et les Chantres du Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles, Le Poème Harmonique, and Boni Pueri. It has received many prestigious honours including the highest award conferred by the French magazine Diapason for a compact disc recording of J.D. Zelenka’s Missa Sanctissimae Trinitatis (Studio Matouš, 1994), the 1997 Zlatá Harmonie (Golden Harmony) award for the best Czech recording of the year (arias by J.S. Bach with Magdaléna Kožená, Polygram, 1997), and the MIDEM 2003 Cannes Classical Award for a recording of J.D. Zelenka’s allegorical play Sub olea pacis et palma virtutis – Melodrama de Sancto Venceslao (Supraphon, 2001). In 2009 Musica Florea received an award at the Varaždin festival in Croatia for the best interpretation of works by J.S. Bach.
Since 2002 Musica Florea has been presenting its own concert series supported by the Ministry of Culture and the City of Prague, with emphasis on both known and newly-discovered compositions that are worthy of authentic interpretation.
