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The founder of the ensembles Collegium 1704 and Collegium Vocale 1704, keyboardist and conductor Václav Luks has been a pioneer in the historical performance of Baroque music in the Czech Republic. He has helped reshape the Baroque repertory through his performances of music by the composers Jan Dismas Zelenka and Josef Myslivecek.

Luks was born in Rakovnik in what was then Czechoslovakia on November 14, 1970. His first instrument was the French horn, which he studied at the Pilsen Conservatory. He added harpsichord to his studies when he went on for advanced study at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, but he continued to perform on the horn as a soloist with the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin. Luks became more deeply involved with early music as a student at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Basel, Switzerland (where he has continued to collaborate with the Baroque ensemble La Cetra), and liberalized travel policies after the fall of the Iron Curtain allowed him to tour as far afield as Mexico, Japan, and the U.S. He also taught at the Academy of Performing Arts and the Mendelssohn-Bartholdy Hochschule für Musik in Leipzig.

Returning to Prague in 2005, he revitalized the ensemble Collegium 1704, which he had founded as a student in 1991, organized it along the lines of historical performance, and added a choir, Collegium Vocale 1704. He quickly organized the Bach-Prague-2005 festival, presenting major choral works by Bach in concert. In 2008, he and Collegium 1704 released an album of works by the little-known Henrico Albicastro. That same year, Luks founded the Prague-Dresden Music Bridge concerts, which later evolved into a major concert series focusing on the art of singing in the Baroque era. With Collegium 1704, he has recorded for Pan Classics, Zig Zag Territoires, and Supraphon, among others, often delving into unknown repertory from Prague in the 18th century. In 2018, Luks and Collegium 1704 backed violinist Leila Schayegh in a recording of the violin concertos of Myslivecek. In 2020, the combined forces of Collegium 1704 and Collegium Vocale 1704 under Luks' direction released a recording of Zelenka's Missa 1724, and Luks also led Collegium 1704 that year on a recording of Rameau's opera Les Boréades for the Château de Versailles label. In 2022, Luks and Collegium 1704 returned to Accent with a historically oriented performance of Smetana's Má Vlast. ~ James Manheim

The historical-performance ensemble Collegium 1704 has been at the forefront of the early music scene in Eastern Europe since its founding in 2005. The group has championed the music of composers Jan Dismas Zelenka and Josef Mysliveček and is named for the year in which Zelenka came on the scene in Prague, but it has also given notable performances of music by Bach, Handel, and other composers from Western Europe.

The moving force behind Collegium 1704 and its associated vocal group, Collegium Vocale 1704, is harpsichordist Václav Luks, who was born in 1970 and studied at the Pilsen Conservatory and the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague before becoming part of the first Czech generation to travel freely to the West. He undertook research and performance studies in early music at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Switzerland and then concertized in Europe and the Americas before joining the Akademie für Alte Musik in Berlin as a horn player. In 1996, Collegium 1704 released the album Zelenka: Composizione per Orchestra on the Supraphon label. Luks returned to Prague in 2005 and set about transforming Collegium 1704, which had existed as a student chamber group since 1991, into a world-class historical performance ensemble. The group re-emerged with the Bach-Prague-2005 Project, a set of performances of Bach's vocal works.

Collegium 1704 and Collegium Vocale 1704, which have consistently attracted top-notch instrumental and vocal soloists, began to attract critical attention with performances in France of Zelenka's Missa votiva, ZWV 18, a work that, like Beethoven's String Quartet No. 15 in A minor, Op. 132, was written as a prayer of thanksgiving for recovery from illness. These performances led to the group's signing by the Zig-Zag Territoires label, for which they recorded another album of Zelenka before moving to the Accent label in the early 2010s. Among the highlights of its tenure there was a recording of Bach's Mass in B minor, BWV 232, in 2013. Luks, who has remained an enthusiastic player of small-ensemble music, issued a set of Zelenka ensemble sonatas with players from Collegium 1704 on Accent in 2017. The group released several more albums of music by Bach, Handel, and Zelenka before moving to the Château de Versailles label for the album Rameau: Les Boréades in 2022. Collegium 1704 returned to Accent in 2022 with a historically oriented performance of Smetana's Má Vlast. ~ James Manheim

Mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kožená, or Lady Rattle if you are so inclined, became a popular and critically celebrated figure in Europe before the age of 30. She was touted as the chief competitor to Cecilia Bartoli (although there is no evidence of a personal rivalry between the two). Her area of primary expertise is 18th century music, particularly Bach, but she has also had success in more Romantic opera and song repertory. Kožená's voice has been variously described as "sweet" and "fiery and melting," depending on her repertory; more constant attributes include her vocal agility and sense of drama, which are both highly regarded.

Kožená was born on May 26, 1973, in Brno, in the Czech Republic (formerly Czechoslovakia). She initially studied at the Brno Conservatory, then with Eva Blahová at the College of Performing Arts in Bratislava. Even before her graduation in 1995, she was winning major prizes in the Czech Republic and internationally, the most significant being top honors at the sixth International Mozart Competition in Salzburg in 1995. She spent the 1996-1997 season as a member of the Vienna Volksoper. In 1997, Kožená made her recording debut with an album of Bach Arias on the Archiv Produktion label. In 1998, she made her debut at the Drottningholm Festival as Paride in Gluck's Paride ed Elena. Her Bach recording caught the attention of the Deutsche Grammophon label, which signed her to an exclusive recording contract in 1999 that resulted in annual releases. In 2000, she debuted at the Châtelet in Paris as Gluck's Orpheus and at the Vienna Festival as Nero in Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea. She appeared as Cherubino in Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro at the Aix-en-Provence Festival in 2001. During this time, Kožená was also an active recitalist throughout Europe but was less known in the U.S., despite performances in San Francisco and at Carnegie Hall. Participation in Metropolitan Opera productions of Mozart and Janácek operas boosted her American reputation.

Kožená has been featured mainly in Baroque and Classical music, although she has also ventured into the Romantic era and 20th century Czech songs. As a recitalist, she has performed and recorded Britten, which has endeared her to the nationalistic British press. An even greater honor came to Kožená in 2003 with the success of her recording of Romantic French opera arias, not to mention her presence in the 2002 centenary production of Pelléas et Mélisande at the Opéra Comique: she was awarded the title of Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government. In 2004, she was named the Gramophone Awards "Artist of the Year." Kožená married conductor Sir Simon Rattle in 2008, and they have three children together. Since her marriage, she has also been known as Lady Rattle. In 2009, Kožená's recording of Julietta fragments by Martinu won a Gramophone Award. The following season, she toured with the ensemble Private Musicke in a program based on her album Lettere Amorose. Kožená began a fruitful relationship with the PentaTone Classics label in 2017, which quickly resulted in several albums, including Il Giardino dei sospiri and Soirée: Magdalena Kožená & Friends in 2019. Her 2023-2024 season included recitals, concerts, and operatic appearances in countries around the world, and saw her release the album Folk Songs (with Rattle conducting the Czech Philharmonic) in 2023, followed by a recording of Handel's Alcina (with Marc Minkowski leading Les Musiciens du Louvre) in 2024. ~ James Reel & Keith Finke