If – looking back to last week – Vítězslav Novák isn’t exactly a household name, his two contemporaries, Otakar Ostrčil and Josef Bohuslav Foester, are both most definitely in the same boat as him. All three were part of a generation overshadowed by Janáček and, to a lesser extent, Suk. And yet the Czech Music Information Centre describes (for instance) Ostrčil’s orchestral variations Calvary as “one of the greatest works of Czech music of the 20th century”.

And then there’s Foerster’s opera Eva…

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