The oldest symphony orchestra in the Czech lands plays here. For 205 years

The orchestra was not created as an ornament for a finished spa metropolis. It was created alongside it — and helped bring it into being.

An ensemble older than most European philharmonics

Mariánské Lázně likes to boast about its springs, its colonnade and its architecture. One local institution, however, tends to be left out of that list, even though it is remarkable by European standards: the West Bohemian Symphony Orchestra — the oldest symphonic ensemble in the Czech lands.

Its beginnings date to 1821. For perspective: Beethoven was still alive then, writing his last piano sonatas. The orchestra has therefore been playing for longer than most famous European philharmonics have existed — and it has been playing continuously ever since.

Born together with the town

The most interesting thing about this story is that the orchestra was not created as an ornament for a finished spa metropolis. It was created alongside it.

Behind it stood Karl Kaspar Reitenberger, abbot of the Teplá monastery and founder of Mariánské Lázně. The man who had the marshes drained, laid out the promenades and brought the town itself into being considered it equally self-evident that a spa needs live music. And so a small spa band came into being beside the springs.

At first it was a modest affair: they played at the springs, on the colonnade and in the theatre — wherever spa life was happening. Over time the band grew into a medium-sized orchestra that increasingly gave symphonic concerts alongside promenade music. From a spa band grew a fully fledged symphonic ensemble.

How music helped build the town

The orchestra's influence on the development of Mariánské Lázně is hard to quantify, but easy to describe.

Music was part of the cure, not background decoration. The spa day had its rhythm: the morning drinking cure at the spring, a walk along the colonnade, an afternoon concert. Music helped maintain the prescribed slow walking pace and turned treatment into an experience worth returning for. Anyone who picks up a spa cup today and steps out onto the Main Colonnade during a promenade concert is doing exactly what guests here did two hundred years ago.

Music brought guests — and the town grew with them. A spa without culture is merely a clinic. It was precisely the combination of springs and music that made Mariánské Lázně an address European society travelled to — and with it came the hotels, the theatre, the Casino Society House and the architecture now protected by UNESCO.

Music created permanent jobs here. A professional orchestra means dozens of musicians living in the town all year round, teaching, performing and training others. For a town the size of Mariánské Lázně, having its own professional symphony orchestra is something you will not find anywhere else in the country.

Resident orchestra of the Chopin Festival

Fryderyk Chopin spent the summer of 1836 in Mariánské Lázně — from 28 July to 24 August, when he came to join the Wodziński family and above all Maria, with whom he was in love. It was his only stay here, it lasted just a month, and yet it left a permanent mark on the town's history. We write about it in detail in Chopin and Mariánské Lázně.

It is no coincidence, then, that the Chopin Festival takes place right here — one of the oldest music festivals in the Czech Republic and a significant one in Europe.

The West Bohemian Symphony Orchestra has served there as the resident symphonic ensemble since the festival's very first year. It is a connection that makes sense: a composer who lived one memorable summer here, a town that remembers him, and an orchestra that has been here longer than the festival itself.

Where and what the orchestra plays today

The orchestra is by no means a museum piece. It gives around a hundred concerts a year, and its programme is more varied than one might expect from a symphonic ensemble:

• Subscription symphony concerts — the backbone of the whole season
• Opera and operetta evenings
• Popular and educational programmes, including concerts for children and young people
• Summer concerts on the colonnade — the most quintessentially Marienbad tradition of all
• Cooperation with music schools not only in Mariánské Lázně — the orchestra thus helps train the next generation

Its home stage is the Marble Hall in the Casino Society House, one of the most beautiful cultural venues in western Bohemia. Performances also take place at the Municipal Theatre.

The present: new leadership and a historic milestone

The orchestra is entering an interesting period.

Vladimír Smutný has been director since 2025.

Radek Baborák is honorary conductor — the internationally acclaimed horn player and conductor who was chief conductor of the ensemble from 2021 to 2025 and remains connected to it. Alongside him work the permanent conductors Martin Peschík and Jan Mikoláš.

And above all: from the 2026/27 season, Michaela Rózsa Růžičková becomes chief conductor. This is a historic moment twice over — she is the first woman to lead the orchestra in more than two hundred years of its existence and only the second female chief conductor of any Czech symphony orchestra.

This is not a gesture. Růžičková emerged from a selection process lasting several months that included concerts with the orchestra — she conducted for the post literally in front of an audience. She studied conducting at the Prague Conservatory and at the Academy of Performing Arts (HAMU), where her teachers included Jiří Bělohlávek, Leoš Svárovský and Tomáš Koutník. Besides orchestral conducting she works in choral and operatic conducting, and is also a singer, arranger and teacher who has collaborated with numerous Czech and international ensembles — among them the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Pardubice Chamber Philharmonic, the Hradec Králové Philharmonic and the North Bohemian Philharmonic Teplice.

The 2026/27 season will therefore bring two events at once: the inaugural concert of the new chief conductor and a gala concert marking the orchestra's 205th anniversary.

Why this matters for visitors

For a guest coming to Mariánské Lázně for a week or two, it means one simple thing: culture here is not an add-on but a given. You do not have to travel anywhere. In a small town surrounded by forests you have a professional symphony orchestra playing practically all year round — from chamber subscription evenings to summer afternoons beneath the cast-iron arches of the colonnade.

It is one of those things that make a spa stay here something other than a mere sequence of treatments.

Practical information

• Current programme and tickets: zso.cz
• Cultural listings for the spa town: news.lazneml.cz
• Culture in Mariánské Lázně: culture guide

And if you are only planning your stay, take a look at the best time to visit — the summer season with concerts on the colonnade has its charm, but a subscription winter in the Marble Hall is worth it too.

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