PENTATONE has announced a long-term partnership with the Czech Philharmonic.

In a statement, the company said, “there are a handful of orchestras in the world whose sound culture, while firmly rooted in a particular realm of repertoire, transcends generations and shifting national boundaries – the Czech Philharmonic among them. It is extraordinarily fortunate and beautifully symbolic that we have at the onset of this journey two conductors sharing the transmission duties, the venerable elder statesman Semyon Bychkov, the orchestra’s current Music Director, on the one hand, and the most important Czech conductor to have emerged in this generation, Principal Guest Conductor Jakub Hrůša on the other, paving the way for other distinguished members of the Czech Philharmonic’s family of conductors further down the line.”

The new agreement will see the orchestra record symphonies and symphonic works by Smetana, Dvořák and Suk, as well as Pentatone’s first-ever full cycle of Mahler Symphonies.

Many of the works will be recorded for the first time, while documenting the orchestra’s first cycle on record since its treasured survey of the corpus under Václav Neumann in the 1980s.

Under the new agreement, the company will release the first album of Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 in April.