Second round jury
Introducing the jury of the 2nd round of Concertino Praga 2022
Marcus Rudolf Axt graduated in musicology, theatre science and German from universities in Bayreuth and Bologna. He participated in the exceptional projects at the Schleswig Holstein Music Festival in 1997 and 1998, while at the same time also being engaged in establishing the new format for the traditional Beethovenfest in Bonn. In 2005, he became the manager of the Bamberger Symphoniker and he then became their intendant in August 2013. Since 2008, he has also been in charge of concert planning for the Berliner Philharmoniker, including their touring activities. He was a correspondent of the Kultur Management Network for many years and has led a number of cultural and orchestral management seminars, including for the Goethe-Institut, Festival junger Künstler Bayreuth and the Kronberg Academy.
The violinist Boris Brovtsyn studied at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow and at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. He has performed as a soloist with conductors such as Sir Neville Marriner, Neeme Järvi or Vladimir Jurowski and with top orchestras, such as the London Philharmonic, the Royal Danish Orchestra and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. He is also intensively involved in chamber music in collaboration with soloists such as Janine Jansen, Gidon Kremer, Mischa Maisky and other renowned soloists. He records for Decca, BIS, Onyx and Naxos, while his recordings of chamber works by Schubert and Schoenberg have received the prestigious ECHO Klassik Award. At present, he is a professor at the Musik und Kunst Privatuniversität in Vienna.
Wenzel Fuchs studied the piano at the Conservatory in Innsbruck and the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. At the age of nineteen, he became the solo clarinettist in the Viennese Volksoper orchestra. Five years later, this was followed by an engagement at the Vienna Opera Company and he has been the solo clarinettist with the Berliner Philharmoniker since 1993. He performs as a soloist all around the world and also devotes himself to chamber music in cooperation with personalities such as Yefim Bronfman, András Schiff or Mitsuko Uchida. He worked as a professor at the University of Music “Hanns Eisler” Berlin and as a guest professor at Tokyo University of the Arts. In 2015, he became a professor at the Mozarteum in Salzburg and he also teaches at the Karajan Academy.
The pianist Pavel Gililov is the winner of the Chopin Competition in Warsaw and the Viotti International Music Competition in Vercelli. He has performed at a number of renowned festivals, including in Newport (USA), Barcelona, at the Salzburg Festival, the Berliner Festspielen etc. As a chamber musician, he has cooperated with Mischa Maisky, Dimitri Sitkovetsky or Boris Pergamenschikov and he was a member of the Berlin Philharmonic Piano Quintet. He has participated in a number of acclaimed recordings for Deutsche Grammophon, RCA Victor, EMI and Orfeo. In 2005, he established the Telekom Bonn International Beethoven Competition. He worked as a piano teacher at the Music University in Cologne from 1979 to 2013 and has been a professor at the Mozarteum in Salzburg since 2007.
Václav Hudeček began his dazzling international career as a fifteen-year-old in London with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. He trained under the tutelage of the legendary David Oistrakh and at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. He has performed at the most prestigious venues throughout the entire world (i.e. Carnegie Hall, the Royal Festival Hall and Suntory Hall) and with the best international orchestras (Berliner Philharmoniker, the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra, Gewandhaus Leipzig and so on). His recording of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons from 1992 is the most successful classical recording in the Czech Republic. He takes methodical care of the upcoming generation of Czech performers. He has received a number of awards for his activities, including the Silver Medal of the City of Prague and Knight of the Order of the Star of Italy.
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 Ivo Kahánek is the absolute winner of the 2004 Prague Spring competition and the holder of many other prizes from domestic and international competitions. He debuted at the BBC Proms in London’s Royal Albert Hall in 2007, while his debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker took place under the baton of Sir Simon Rattle in 2017. He cooperates with leading conductors (Semyon Bychkov, Andrés Orozco-Estrada and Jakub Hrůša), orchestras (the Czech Philharmonic, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and the Wiener Symphoniker) and soloists (Daniel Hope, Alissa Weilerstein, Pavel Černoch) at significant venues in the USA, Great Britain, Germany, Austria, Poland, Slovakia etc. His album of Dvořák and Martinů piano concertos has received a number of prestigious music awards, including the BBC Music Magazine’s CD of the month.
Sergei Nakariakov is one of the most sought after trumpeters on the international scene. He began playing the piano at the age of six, but later transferred to the trumpet. His father was a great supporter and arranged a large number of works originally intended for other instruments for the trumpet. He cooperates with renowned conductors (including Christoph Eschenbach, Kent Nagano and Vladimir Ashkenazy) and with leading soloists (Vadim Repin, Martha Argerich, Emmanuel Pahud and others). His repertoire covers not only the entire range of original literature for the trumpet, but also many transcriptions and newly commissioned works. He is also a big promoter of the flugelhorn. His discography with Teldec Classics has also garnered enthusiastic acclaim from critics.
Irvin Venyš is one of the most progressive performers on the Czech music scene. He has become a sought after soloist and chamber player thanks to his wide ranging performances from “classical” music through to folklore and jazz and on to demanding works from the 20th and 21st centuries. He cooperates with many contemporary composers and actively contributes to the premiere and other performances of works by international and local authors. He released his latest CD with the Epoque Quartet entitled “Komp(l)ot” under his new Irvin Classics label. He works as a clarinet teacher at the Music and Dance Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague and as the director of the Bohuslav Martinů Foundation. He co-founded and organises the Prague Clarinet Days cultural and educational project and the Concert against Totalitarianism, which is a reminder of the anniversary of 17 November and the totalitarian regime’s repression of artists.