First round jury
Introducing the jury of the 1st round of Concertino Praga 2022
The pianist Igor Ardašev graduated from the Brno Conservatory and the Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts. He studied under Paul Badura-Skoda in Austria and Rudolf Serkin in the USA in 1989–1992. He has received a number of awards in international competitions, including at the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, the Prague Spring Competition and the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels. He is invited to music festivals such as the Prague Spring, the Janáček May Festival, Festspiele Europäische Wochen Passau, Musikfestival Schloss Moritzburg, the Rudolf Firkušný Festival, Concentus Moraviae and others. His discography includes a collective recording of Beethoven’s violin sonatas, the works of Tchaikovsky, Janáček, Dvořák, Smetana, Liszt, Martinů, Ježek, Prokofiev and others. He has also taught at the Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Brno since 2012.
The Polish clarinettist and conductor Jakub Jan Bokun is the artistic director at the Clarimania festival, the founder and conductor of the Inter>CAMERATA chamber orchestra and the chairman of the Polish branch of the International Clarinet Association. He studied at the Music Academy in Wrocław and at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris. He is the winner of a number of international competitions. He has studied conducting under Sergiu Celibidache, David Zinman, Kurt Masur and James Levin. He has recorded fifteen CDs as both a clarinettist and a conductor. He is a sought after teacher who has led a number of courses in Brussels, Sofia, Belgrade, Prague, Paris, Brno, Ljubljana, Mexico, Beijing, Tokyo, Aviles and in the USA. He is currently working at the Karol Lipiński Music Academy in Wrocław.
The harpist Jana Boušková is one of the leading personalities in Czech performance and she performs on many renowned international stages and festivals. The most significant have included her solo recitals at New York’s Lincoln Centre, at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, Vienna’s Musikverein and at the Prague Spring, Smetana’s Litomyšl or Berliner Festtage festivals. She cooperates as a chamber musician with renowned performers such as Emmanuel Pahud, Christian Tetzlaff, Sharon Kam or Mstislav Rostropovich. She completed a large concert tour of Israel and Europe with the violinist Maxim Vengerov. She is a laureate of many prestigious international harp competitions and the holder of a number of other awards. She has been the solo harpist at the Czech Philharmonic since 2005.
The multifaceted musician Raimon Colomer graduated in the guitar and composition. He has performed in a number of choirs as a singer, including Orfeó Català de Barcelona, with which he has performed all around Spain, in France, Italy, Switzerland, Mexico and Cuba. He has also taught at several music schools in Catalonia, where in addition to teaching harmony, counterpoint and musical forms, he has also organised musicological conferences. In 2005–2020, he was in charge of the Catalunya Música radio station, where he is now the main music editor. He has a wide range of experience with being on juries in several music competitions and since 2016 he has been a member of the Advisory Board of L’Auditori, one of the most significant musical institutions in Catalonia.
Petr Hanzlík studied composition at the Jaroslav Ježek Conservatory. He has long cooperated with Czech Radio and Concertino Praga as a composer, dramaturg, music director, singer, producer and organiser with more than thirty years of experience across all musical genres. He is the author of a large number of pieces in the areas of chamber, symphonic, jazz, alternative and theatre music. He is also the artistic director and chief dramaturg of music courses and the Music Connections in Soběslav chamber music festival and the founder and chairman of the association of the same name. He is a singer in and the leader of The Swings vocal quartet and the bands, DayDream Band and Domácí výroba. Photography is also one of his hobbies.
Milan Muzikář has dedicated himself to music since the age of six. He graduated from the Teplice Conservatory and the Music and Dance Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. He won three national competitions during his studies. He was a member of the West Bohemian Symphony Orchestra Mariánské Lázně from 1992 to 1995. He has been the solo bassoonist at the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra since 1996. His greatest successes include a performance of Ladislav Simon’s Bassoon Concerto with the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra under the baton of its principal conductor Vladimír Válek. In 2006, he performed Johann Nepomuk Hummel’s Grand Concerto in Bratislava accompanied by the Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra. At the beginning of 2017, he was appointed to the position of the director of the West Bohemian Symphony Orchestra Mariánské Lázně, where he also performs as the solo bassoonist.
The violinist František Souček graduated from the conservatory and the Music and Dance Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. He is the first violinist in the Zemlinsky Quartet, which he founded in 1994 and with which he has received, amongst other things, the prestigious French Diapason d´Or award or prizes from the 2005 Prague Spring, 2003 New Talent EBU, London 2006, Banff 2007, Bordeaux 2010 and other competitions. As a soloist, he has received the main prizes at the Tribune of Young Artists UNESCO Ljubljana, Louis Spohr Weimar, Rotary Nuremberg, the Kocian Violin Competition, Concertino Praga, Beethoven’s Hradec and other international music competitions. In 2006–2010, he worked as an assistant in the quartet class of Professors Walter Levin and Rainer Schmidt at the University of Basel and he has taught violin and chamber playing at the Prague Conservatory since 2009.
The Swiss flautist Felix Renggli performs as both a soloist and a chamber musician, he has held masterclasses in Europe, South America, the USA, Japan, Korea and China and he regularly appears as a guest at a range of international music festivals. His repertoire stretches from early music on period instruments through to works by contemporary authors. He has been the Professor of Flute and Chamber Music at the Music University in Basel since 1994and also at the Music University in Freiburg in 2004–2014. He has been one of three artistic directors of the Swiss Chamber Concerts series since 1999. He has a series of recordings with Swiss chamber soloists, Heinz Holliger, Camerata Bern or the Arditti Quartet to his name.
The Austrian trumpeter and teacher, Roman Rindberger, comes from a musical family. He studied the trumpet in Salzburg, Mainz, Basel and Karlsruhe and received scholarships from the Berliner Philharmoniker and the Zurich Opera. His teachers have included personalities such as Hans Gansch, Klaus Schuhwerk, Reinhold Friedrich, Malte Burba, Tamas Velenczei and Martin Kretzer. He was the trumpeter at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich and the first trumpet at the Hesse State Opera in Wiesbaden until 2004. Since then, he has been a member of the Mnozil Brass ensemble which plays up to 100 concerts a year around all of Europe, the United States and Asia. Since 2012, he has been a professor of trumpet and chamber performance at the private University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna.
The German violoncellist Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt studied under David Geringas and Aldo Parisot. He is a laureate from a number of international competitions, including the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. He has performed as a soloist with the best-known orchestras and renowned conductors in Europe, Russia and the USA, including the Hekules Hall in Munich, London’s Wigmore Hall or Carnegie Hall in New York. He is also a welcome guest at a number of music festivals. He has performed as a chamber musician with significant artists such as Emanuel Ax, Gil Shaham, Isabelle Faust etc. His recordings have received prestigious awards including the Diapason d'Or. He is also becoming more involved in conducting, including in Germany, Spain and Switzerland. He is a professor at several music universities.