This week, for the first time on Composer of the Week, Donald Macleod explores the life of one of the 20th century's trailblazers, the Czech composer Vítezslava Kaprálová.

Born in 1915 into a musical family, Vítezslava Kaprálová was one of the brightest young composers to emerge in Czech music inbetween the two world wars. You may have come across her name in association with her mentor, the composer Bohuslav Martinu, with whom she later became romantically involved, but irrespective of that link Kaprálová achieved considerable success under her own steam, notching up a series of professional achievements that set her apart from her contemporaries. She was the first woman to graduate as a composer from the Brno Conservatory, the first woman to be given the prestigious Smetana award for composition and the first woman to conduct the Czech Philharmonic. Here in the UK Kaprálová joined the ranks of British composer Dame Ethel Smyth and Nadia Boulanger in conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra before the Second World War.

There's litte doubt that the turbulence of the times in which Kaprálová lived created obstacles in her creative path. She became an exile after the Munich Pact of 1938 and the subsequent onset of the Second World War. Furthermore, like the talented French composer Lili Boulanger some twenty years earlier, Kaprálová's life was cut short; she died in France in 1940, at the age of just twenty-five. Nonetheless, she was able to compose quickly and naturally, so a sizeable legacy exists of some fifty works, spread across vocal, chamber, solo piano and orchestral forms. Donald Macleod explores Vítezslava Kaprálová's extraordinary story with Karla Hartl, the founder of The Kaprálová Society.

Today Donald Macleod looks at Kaprálová's childhood in Brno, where she grew up in a musical family, in the shadow of Janácek's influence. She began to write music early on, with her earliest compositions, including two song sketches, here specially recorded by Radio 3 New Generation Artist, the Ukrainian soprano Olena Tokar, as well as her best known piano work, "April Preludes", and the piece with which she made an acclaimed debut in the UK, conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra in her own "Military Sinfonietta" in 1938.

Cantabile moderato - from Five Compositions for Piano
Virginia Eskin, piano

April Preludes, Op.13
Virginia Eskin, piano

Two song sketches
Olena Tokar, soprano
Igor Gryshyn, piano

Navzdy, Op.12
Olena Tokar, soprano
Igor Gryshyn, piano

Legend and Burlesque, Op.3
Stephanie Chase, violin
Virginia Eskin, piano

Military Sinfonietta, Op.11
Czech Symphony Orchestra of Brno
František Jílek, conductor. Show less