First round jury
Let us introduce the jury for the first round of Concertino Praga 2026
Wind instruments category
Milan Puklický graduated from the Prague Conservatory and from Josef Vlach’s class at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. He performed as a member of chamber ensembles and as a soloist in many European countries and in America until 1985. He then expanded his theoretical and practical musical education with private study of composition and conducting. He has been a musical director at Czechoslovak and late Czech Radio since 1985 and has been exclusively involved in this area since 1990. He cooperates with domestic and international recording companies, music groups, chamber ensembles and soloists in his capacity as a musical director. He has contributed to the creation of many recordings, some of which have received significant international awards.
Igor Františák studied at the Ostrava Conservatory in the class of Assoc. Prof. Valtr Vítek, with whom he continued his studies at the Department of Music Education at the University of Ostrava. In 2001, he was awarded a government scholarship to study at the Norwegian Academy of Music, where he worked under the guidance of Prof. Hans Christian Bræin.
As a soloist, he has performed with the Janáček Philharmonic Ostrava, Slovak Chamber Orchestra, Kurpfälzisches Kammerorchester Mannheim, Czech Virtuosi, as well as with the Pavel Haas Quartet, Bennewitz Quartet, Zemlinsky Quartet, and others. As a specialist in chalumeau, baroque clarinets, and classical-period clarinets, he collaborates with ensembles such as Collegium 1704, Collegium Marianum, Musica Florea, Ensemble Tourbillon, Ensemble Inégal, {oh!} Orkiestra Historyczna (Poland), and Terra Nova Collective (Belgium). Since 2018, he has been a permanent member of the unique ensemble of historical basset horns, Lotz Trio. He currently serves as Professor of Clarinet at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Ostrava. He is an official artist of Buffet Crampon, D’Addario Woodwinds, and Gleichweit Mouthpiece. Since 2019, he has been a member of the Board of the International Clarinet Association, representing the Czech Republic.
Jan Ostrý (flute)
Walter Hofbauer (trumpet)
The French horn player Jan Vobořil studied at the Conservatory in Brno and the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. He has since become a laureate in seven national competitions. He is the solo horn player at the Czech Philharmonic and the head of the French horn group. He was previously the solo horn player at the Brno State Philharmonia and the PKF ‒ Prague Philharmonia. He has performed as a soloist both at home and abroad (Germany, Austria, France, Japan and the USA) under the batons of Jiří Bělohlávek, John Eliot Gardiner, Petr Altrichter, Jakub Hrůša etc. He has also worked with leading domestic orchestras as a soloist, including the Czech Philharmonic. He receives invitations to play with many international orchestras as a horn player; the NDR Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, the Bamberger Symphoniker, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Gewandhaus Orchestra Leipzig etc. He has worked with conductors such as Claudio Abbado, Riccardo Muti, Simon Rattle, Semyon Bychkov, Seiji Ozawa, Wolfgang Sawallisch etc. He has recorded for Czech Radio and Television, Supraphon, German ARD television, Japanese Octavia Records and English Classicprint etc. He is a member of the Prague Wind Quintet and the Czech Horn Quartet.
String and keyboard instruments category
Markéta Tomková Janáčková (music director)
Tomáš Jamník studied the violoncello in Prague, Leipzig and Berlin and he culminated his education as a scholarship holder at the Karajan Academy. In 2006, he won the Prague Spring international competition and he was a finalist and the winner of a special prize at the Pierre Fournier Competition in London in 2011. He performs at prestigious venues (including Wigmore Hall, the Elbphilharmonie and the Mozarteum), where he cooperates with leading soloists (Magdalena Kožená, Leif Ove Andsnes, Ivo Kahánek and others). In addition to the classical repertoire, he also performs lesser-known works; for example, he performed the premiere of his own arrangement of Dvořák’s A Major Violoncello Concerto in 2019. He has been the artistic director at the Academy of Chamber Music since 2015. This year, he is a guest assistant at the prestigious Juilliard School in New York.
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 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 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. She is a professor at the Royal College of Music in London and at the Academy of Performing Arts (HAMU) in Prague.