2CD 60 Let Orchestru Václava Hybše

This year the Václav Hybš Orchestra celebrated 60 years since its foundation. The founding father, Václav Hybš, personally selected 40 of the best recordings of his entire career for this year.

The album is accompanied by an extensive booklet with accompanying text by Miloš Skalka:

We live in a time when everyone is considered a legend. In other words, the word "legend" is heavily overused, but there are exceptions where it still hasn't lost its original meaning and is still valid. Such a legend is undoubtedly the conductor, arranger, trumpeter and occasional composer Václav Hybš.

He hails from Police nad Metují near Náchod (be careful, not from Polička, he is allergic to that confusion), where he was born as a Gemini on 3 June 1935 and is proud of his home town. His grandfather and father were both brass band leaders and little Vasik was already drumming in his father's orchestra at the age of seven. At ten he began to learn the trumpet and in 1955 he graduated from the Prague Conservatory, where trumpet became his main field of study. At that time he was already playing occasionally in various bands, most often in the orchestras of Ladislav Bezubka and Zdeněk Barták. After completing two years of basic military service (does today's young generation even know what that was like?) he worked as a trumpeter in the orchestras of Kamil Hála and Josef Posledny, when he also began to write his first arrangements.

From 1960 to 1969, Václav Hybš was the third trumpeter (alongside Jiří Jelínek and Richard Kubernát) in the newly formed Czechoslovak Radio Dance Orchestra, founded and led by conductor, composer, arranger, clarinetist and saxophonist Karel Krautgartner. For this orchestra Václav Hybš arranged for example the composition Glory for the film If a Thousand Clarinet, or Mrholí). At that time, the radio band also included the musical production of the Prague Rokoko Theatre, for which Václav Hybš assembled a six-piece theatre orchestra, which included mainly his colleagues from the radio band. At the Rokoko, with his musicians and in his own arrangements, he scored music for a number of productions, including Ballad of Rags, Intimate Letters, Waldemar Matuška's Eight Loves and Philosophical History. At the same time, he was offered by the radio to form a studio ensemble that would record rewarding melodies in interesting and exploratory instrumentations, a task that was perfect for Václav Hybš. Already the first recordings of the new ensemble impressed with their instrumental inventiveness and revelatory sound colour (among others, The Skaters, The March of the Announcers, Gold and Silver).

At the turn of the 1960s and 1970s, Václav Hybš "became independent" and took the lead as conductor and arranger of the orchestra that accompanied Waldemar Matuska, for whom he created a rich repertoire of attractive compositions. Let us recall at least the album Waldemar Sings Songs from Around the World (1971), where he both sought and found unusual musical combinations. As an arranger, he gave the main role to the brass section, which he supplemented with only one saxophone, often using a vocal choir, as well as instruments less common and unused for dance music until then (horn, harp). In collaboration with Waldemar Matuška, he recorded many imaginative arrangements of original folk melodies from Czech, English and American folklore. For many listeners, Waldemar Matuška's singing era is inseparably linked with the Hybša Orchestra and is considered his most successful era, if we disregard Matuška's stellar semaphore beginnings.

In the mid-1970s, Václav Hybš expanded his orchestra and began to use four trumpets, four trombones, two horns, tuba, flute or piccolo, all of which were supplemented in the recording studio by a large string section. In addition to working with vocal performers, he began to focus programmatically on instrumental compositions, most of which he arranged himself. In his typical style, with an emphasis on the melodic side of the pieces, using witty and colourful combinations.

For the television screen, Václav Hybš prepared a pleiad of composed programmes, the musical component of which later also appeared on records (among others, Hybš plays tango, but also polka, waltz, or Hašler), his orchestra also accompanied the popular Televarieté. A great success was achieved by a large mixture of songs from the repertoire of Karel Gott and Waldemar Matuška called New Year's Eve Opera, in which Václav Hybš switched the repertoire and roles of both singers in his selection, composition and arrangements. Which was a million-dollar idea... He also went with the same performers in his arrangement of Smetana's The Bartered Bride, which both of them obviously welcomed.

The Václav Hybš Orchestra has collaborated with perhaps all our singers worth their salt, most often with those who have impressed the bandleader and arranger in one person in some extraordinary way. As he always emphasized, his main concern was to invent something for the performer that he had never sung before. To surprise him and at the same time get him excited about his idea. And he was extremely successful.

The line-up of the Václav Hybš Orchestra, or rather its studio branch, has included great players from our music scene - among others trombonists Zdeněk Pulec and Jan Hynčica, pianist Milan Dvořák, trumpeters Václav Král and Nikola Janev, and horn soloist Miloš Petr. With violin virtuoso and lifelong friend Josef Suk, Václav Hybš recorded two albums, the first of which, with compositions such as Poem, Dreaming, Ave Maria, Air, Donkey Serenade, and Indian Love Song, was also released under the title Yesterday in the Federal Republic of Germany, Japan, and the United States. Václav Hybš has recorded an album with the black American operatic soprano Felicia Weathers with compositions by Grieg, Schumann, Schubert and Tchaikovsky.

Václav Hybš has many firsts - one of them is that he constantly adds young musicians to his orchestra, whom he likes to nurture (the average age of the band today is just over twenty years) - and another is the regular organisation of Christmas concerts. The first of these Christmas tours (each time with an attractive main guest) took place in 1976 and this tradition continues successfully to this day. Czech Radio even had two long-running music series - one was called Václav Hybš's Delicacies and was hosted by Jan Rosák, the other was called Šlágry od srdce and was hosted by Václav Hybš himself.

Only a small cross-section of the work of Václav Hybš and his orchestra is presented in the double CD that you are now getting your hands on. Three of his recordings are concert recordings, which gives you the pleasant feeling of being at a concert...

Václav Hybš once said: 'I am guided by my feelings when choosing repertoire. There are certain boundaries that cannot be crossed in order not to lose the listener. I refuse to interpret contrived, albeit artistically interesting matters that we would play only for ourselves. I submit myself to the demands of the listeners - and the audience's response convinces us that it is not a useless job."

The Václav Hybš Orchestra is sixty years old, and Václav Hybš will celebrate his eighty-fifth birthday on 3 June next year, which is cause for both great congratulations and a big bow. We have never been short of bandleaders and arrangers, but Václav Hybš is only one!