„Music, that is a chord, gentlemen!“
— Leoš Janáček
Zdeněk Klauda
„For a conductor, it is better to have the score in their head than to have their head in the score..“
— Hans Von Bülow
Conductor Zdeněk Klauda is a multifaceted artistic personality. In addition to his career as a conductor, he is the head of musical staging at the National Theatre in Prague and simultaneously serves as the dramaturg and co-founder of the Jakub Jan Ryba Festival. Due to his artistic qualities and extensive experience, he is frequently invited to collaborate with renowned opera houses worldwide, such as the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, the Semper Opera in Dresden, the Vienna State Opera, the Paris Opera, the Salzburg Festival, and the Glyndebourne Festival.
Zdeněk Klauda is also the founder and conductor of the orchestra L'Armonia Terrena. He is dedicated to concert performances, research, and an extensive recording career. His lifelong mission is to rediscover and promote the unjustly forgotten works of Czech composers, as well as to bring the music of contemporary composers to life.
Since the 2022/2023 season, he has regularly conducted the productions of the operas The Magic Flute and Le nozze di Figaro at the National Theatre in Prague. In the 2024/2025 season, he will debut with the Czech Radio Symphony Orchestra, with which he has already recorded Drejsl's Symphony. In 2021, his long-term research led to the recording Rediscovered Romantic Testimony, dedicated to the symphonic legacy of the early Romantic Czech composer of German origin, Václav Jindřich Veit. With this program, he and L'Armonia Terrena performed at the opening concert of the Chamber Series of the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra (FOK).
For Nibiru Publishers, he has recorded several CDs with his orchestra. The first, titled DECADE, features soprano Simona Šaturová in works by Mozart and Mysliveček. The second CD, featuring the world premiere recording of Jakub Jan Ryba's Stabat Mater, was awarded the prestigious DIAPASON DÉCOUVERTE. Klauda continues to develop Ryba's legacy in the highly successful project Kouzelná Rybovka by Matěj Forman, which he also co-authored and recorded with soloists and the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra (FOK) for Czech Television. In 2024, at his initiative, a piano version of the song cycle Dřevěný Kristus by composer Jan Hanuš will be released by Radioservis, alongside a chamber orchestra version by composer Jaroslav Pelikán, which Klauda initiated and later performed at the Brno Easter Festival of Sacred Music in 2022.
In January 2018, he made his conducting debut at the Moscow New Opera. In January 2019, he was involved in the musical staging of The Bartered Bride at the Semper Opera in Dresden, made his debut with the Košice State Philharmonic, and conducted the National Theatre's production of Mozart's The Magic Flute. During the 2019/2020 season, he conducted Mozart's Don Giovanni at the National Theatre in Prague. In the same season, he performed with his orchestra as a guest of the Czech Chamber Music Society as part of their concert season for the Czech Philharmonic, to which he will return.
In 2012, he won 3rd place at the conducting competition in Constanța, Romania. He regularly guest conducts with most Czech orchestras, opera houses, and at major Czech music festivals. He also regularly accompanies top Czech and international singers such as Simona Šaturová, Slávka Zámečníková, Adam Plachetka, and Veronika Dzhioeva, both as a conductor and a pianist.
L'Armonia Terrena
The chamber ensemble L'Armonia Terrena has grown from the artistic environment of extraordinary musical personalities, such as violinist and composer Jan Valta, and flutist and composer Jaroslav Pelikán. The ensemble quickly attracted prominent figures from the younger generation of artists. Notable among them is the outstanding violinist Milan Al-Ashhab.
The formation of the ensemble was initiated by the creation of a solo album by soprano Simona Šaturová titled Decade, featuring music by Josef Mysliveček and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, in 2014. This was followed by other successful recording projects. In 2017, the ensemble recorded the world premiere of Ryba’s Latin Stabat Mater (1805), which, among other accolades, received the prestigious DIAPASON découverte award. In 2019, the ensemble released the world premiere recording of Antonín Rejcha's masterwork Requiem. The end of 2019 also saw the release of a CD with the rediscovered work by Jakub Jan Ryba, Missa Solemnis in C per Festo Resurrectionis. The Ryba triptych was completed in 2020 with a recording of his orchestral works and instrumental concertos. The phenomenal horn player Radek Baborák took on the solo part of the Horn Concerto, while the magnificent, nearly forty-minute Cello Concerto was recorded by young Czech cellist Eduard Šístek.
The most recent album, released in 2021, is titled Rediscovered Romantic Testimony. This CD presents a nearly complete recording of the orchestral works of the remarkable Czech composer from the first half of the 19th century, Václav Jindřich Veit, sometimes referred to as the Czech Mendelssohn.
The creation of these groundbreaking musical recordings brings joy to all the musicians not only through the creative process but also, above all, by fulfilling the ensemble's mission: to allow forgotten or unjustly overlooked gems of Czech music to shine again in concert halls and become a permanent part of concert life.
In addition to regularly producing critically acclaimed CDs, in 2025, L'Armonia Terrena created its own platform for exceptional and complex cultural events called Spolu v hudbě (Together in Music).