Jan Vičar: Concert Marking His 65th Birthday

OperaPlus, 30.11.2014, Martina Pudelová

Definitely figuring among the production´s assets was its choice of interpreters, all of them outstanding soloists... The evening took off with mezzo-soprano Barbora Polášková, accompanied by pianist Markéta Janáčková. They performed the cycle of Six Capricious Songs, settings of texts by Ivan Janík and Jiří Žáček. Polášková, soloist of the Moravian Theatre Olomouc, rendered them with an air of playfulness and a good deal of individual approach.

Interview with Barbora Polášková, Radniční listy, Olomouc, October 2013

Opera is very much like a football game, only you´ve got to think more while doing it, says Barbora Polášková, mezzo-soprano of the Moravian Theatre in Olomouc.

Do you believe you are flexible? If so, you have most likely never met opera singer Barbora Polášková. This charming young lady endowed with an inimitable voice with which she can safely pin the audience down to their seats, speaks several languages, can dance and play musical instruments, and on top of it all, is able to study the role of Carmen in five days, or will ask for just a few hours of preparatory training before standing in for an indisposed colleague on a stage far away from home. “I am tenacious and purposeful enough, and stubborn too, sometimes perhaps even going a bit over the top there,” says mezzo Barbora Polášková with a chuckle. “But then, hard work and real zest for it will get you the farthest in your pursuits.”

Read more: Interview, Radniční listy Olomouc, October 2013

Hudební rozhledy, October 2013

Review of a Concert at the Festival of Chamber Music Český Krumlov, 7.7.2013, Barbora Polášková and Duo Simpre Nuevo.

An artist who has worked with them regularly and who joined them for the festival´s closing concert was mezzo-soprano Barbora Polášková, soloist of the opera houses of Olomouc and Plzeň. ... Barbora Polášková, too, contributed a pleasant surprise, in a performance standing out for spontaneity of rendition and a tender yet sonorous voice controlled by flawless technique.

Opera PLUS, 8.5.2011, Zdena Plachá

This young lady struck at Olomouc a year ago like lightning out of  blue sky. She literally jumped onto a moving train named Carmen, standing in for a colleague who had given the role up merely a month before the first night. Less than a year from that moment, her name is being cited among opera´s three brightest talents announced by Opera PLUS blog.

Read more: Barbora Polášková - interview, OperaPLUS, May 2011

Olomoucký deník daily newspaper, 5.4.2011, David Kaňovský

Artists in Concert Paying Tribute to Gustav Mahler

A concert in tribute to Gustav Mahler took place in the Corpus Christi Chapel of Palacký University Art Centre in Olomouc, on Wednesday, March 30. A soloist of the Moravian Theatre opera company, mezzosoprano Barbora Polášková, accompanied by pianist Milada Jehličková, appeared in a programme from song cycles of Vítězslava Kaprálová, Alma Mahler, Jan Vičar, and Gustav Mahler.

The evening was opened by the cycle, Selected Songs, from the pen of Vítězslava Kaprálová, an outstanding woman composer of the first half of the 20th century. A set of five songs in which the composer succeeded in capturing on a very small scale the inner atmosphere of the individual texts, was rendered by Ms Polášková in a highly expressive manner, yet at the same time with the utmost sensitivity. Perhaps the only minor reservation would concern a touch of unease felt on some of the singer´s high notes.

The second part of the concert featured the song cycle by Gustav Mahler´s wife, Alma Mahler, entitled Sämtliche Lieder. The cycles´s six numbers proved the perfect match for Barbora Polášková´s thoroughly natural and at the same time distinctly individual voice. Her deeply felt account of the series brought to surface the ardent emotion with which Alma wrote her songs. ...

After the intermission came the time for Jan Vičar´s cycle of Four Songs to the words of Jiří Žáček. ... The playful combination of Jiří Žáček´s verse with a melodious vocal line and modern piano accompaniment gave rise to a fresh song cycle whose performance by the two interpreters ushered into the chapel´s interior an atmosphere of serene joy.

The concert´s final part bore the hallmark of its title, with the rendition of Gustav Mahler´s song cycle, Kindertotenlieder. The “Songs of Dead Children” is a solemn, even sorrowful collection, in whose musical element the composer manifested a touch of genius in linking the various song lines whose vocal and instrumental components are intertwined in an indivisible whole. Ms Polášková made a virtually flawless display of her velvety-hued voice in getting across Mahler´s yearning. Moreover, here even the high notes were rendered with all due brilliance, without the least sign of falter.

The concert as a whole deserves praise as an outstanding occasion. Both interpreters performed with impeccable co-ordination, the result being a rare evening of musical delight. This was a tribute to Mahler in the truest sense of the term.