Second round jury
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.
Paul Lewis is one of the leading performers of the Central European piano repertoire and his recordings of concertos by Beethoven and Schubert have garnered general critical acclaim. He received a CBE for his services to music in 2016. His close relationship to Beethoven’s music led to him participating in the filming of the three-part BBC documentary Being Beethoven and he performed a cycle of five piano concertos at Tanglewood in 2022. He has repeated this cycle around the entire world and was the first pianist to play the entire thing at the BBC Proms during a single season. In the last two seasons, he has performed a series of four concertos with Schubert’s later piano sonatas in more than thirty concert halls throughout the entire world. As a chamber player, he is a regular guest at Wigmore Hall, where he has performed more than one hundred times. Lewis is one of the artistic directors at the Midsummer Music festival, an annual display of chamber music held in Buckinghamshire in Great Britain. In addition to his concert performances, he also leads masterclasses around the entire world.
Maria Meerovitch graduated from the Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory in Saint Petersburg and the Royal Conservatory in Antwerp. She is the holder of first prizes from a number of international competitions and performs around the world at solo and chamber recitals. To date, she has performed in the USA, Japan, Taiwan, Brazil, South Africa, South Korea, Israel and in a number of European countries. She cooperates with renowned soloists, including Martha Argerich, Vadim Repin, Boris Berezovsky and Sergei Nakariakov. Maria has performed as a soloist with many orchestras throughout the world, including the London Philharmonic, the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra or the English Chamber Orchestra. Her long successful teaching career at the Royal Conservatory in Antwerp and her career as a performer mean that she is frequently invited to lead masterclasses around the world. These have included at Johannesburg University, the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff, the University of Cincinnati or the masterclasses of the Trans-Siberian Art Festival, to name but a few.
František Novotný is a graduate of the Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Brno and has also studied the violin under the virtuosos and teachers Zakhar Bron and Viktor Treťjakov. He has received laureate titles and special mentions at more than twenty competitions. He is a winner of a RAI award from the Italian Radio and Television Corporation and a Henryk Wieniawski medal. He has an exceptionally wide repertoire and has performed concerts in Europe, Japan and the USA. He is a professor at the Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Brno and the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava, he teaches masterclasses and is active in the juries of international competitions. In 2023, he received the significant Kobushi-Shien Award in Japan for excellent concert performances and his long-term contribution to the arts. His performance of the finale of the Allegro assai vivace from the Korngold Concerto for violin and orchestra was chosen as the soundtrack for Season 4 of the mysterious series Stranger Things (Netflix). His latest album CON GRAZIA is yet another unique project. In addition to CDs, his recordings can also be found in the MP3 and FLAC formats on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music and Deezer.
Stana Salgo is an experienced music editor and a long-time presenter of the classical and world music show called "Z koncertních pódií" (From Concert Stages) and broadcast on the Radio Montenegro public station. She has frequently attended EBU seminars throughout her successful career. She is also a long-time presenter of the Viennese New Year's concerts and broadcasts from the Metropolitan Opera. In 2013 and 2022, she was a member of the jury for the Montenegrin national round of the Eurovision Song Contest. She has excellent knowledge of the area of classical music and its history and significant performers.
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.
Henrik Wahlgren studied under Alf Nilsson at the Royal Music University in Stockholm in 1985–1990. He received his first musical engagement with the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra where he remained until 1993. He continued his studies under Günther Passin at the Music University in Munich. In 1994, he became the cor anglais player in the orchestra at the Leipzig Gewandhaus, where he was active until 1997. He was then engaged as the solo oboist at the Staatskapelle Dresden until 1999, from whence he returned to his previous place of engagement in Leipzig, but this time as the solo oboist. He has been regularly active as a répétiteur at the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester and has taught at the Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy Music University in Leipzig since 2014. He regularly devotes himself to chamber music and is a member of the Armonia Ensemble.
The flautist Henrik Wiese was born in Vienna in 1971. He received his musical education under Ingrid Koch-Dörnbrak and Paul Meisen. He acquired his initial experience as an orchestral player as the second flute in the Munich Philharmonic under its former principal conductor Sergiu Celibidache. In 1995–2006, he was the principal flautist at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich and he became the principal flautist at the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in 2006. He has synesthetic abilities, i.e. he hears colours. This rare gift is an important source of musical inspiration for him. He has performed as a soloist with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Hannover Radio Orchestra, the Polish Chamber Philharmonic, the Prague Chamber Orchestra and the Munich Chamber Orchestra. His extensive music activities are especially borne out by his recordings of chamber music. In addition to a modern Boehm flute, he also plays a baroque instrument, with which he performs in L'accadémia Giocosa. He has been a professor at the Mozarteum in Salzburg for many years.
The British French horn player Sarah Willis was born in the USA and grew up in Tokyo, Boston, Moscow and London. She had her first French horn lesson at the age of fourteen and studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in the British metropolis for three years before continuing her education under Fergus McWilliam in Berlin. In 1991–2001, she was a member of the Staatskapelle Berlin and in 2001 she became the first female brass player to get a chair with the Berlin Philharmoniker. She also plays with a number of other leading orchestras and has performed all around the world both as a soloist and as a chamber musician. She has recorded a series of well-received albums, of which the most recent is entitled “Mozart y Mambo” and combines the music of the classics with Cuban rhythms. She is also involved in teaching and educational activities, including teaching at the Karajan Academy and presenting family concerts by the Berlin Philharmoniker. Her contribution to classical music was acknowledged at the highest levels in Great Britain, when Queen Elizabeth II awarded her the prestigious Member of the Order of the British Empire in 2021.