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8/20/2008 | Vladimír Válek, Sayaka ...

Vladimír Válek

Vladimír Válek (1935), one of the leaders of the Czech school of conducting, first received an all-round musical education at the Conservatory in Kroměříž. He studied conducting in Bratislava and subsequently in at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague under Alois Klíma and Robert Brock. After completing his university studies, he worked with a number of Czech orchestras, and in 1975 he became the conductor of the Prague Symphony Orchestra, where he stayed for the next twelve years. In 1985 he also accepted an offer to become the principal conductor of the Czech Radio Symphony Orchestra. He continues to perform this role, in which he symbolically carried on with the work of his professor and the long-time principal conductor of the radio symphony orchestra Alois Klíma, to this day. Under his energetic leadership, the orchestra has become one of the most remarkable European radio ensembles. Together they completed not just major foreign tours throughout Europe and overseas, but they have managed to break out of the radio studio (although the main volume of the orchestra's work remains in this area) and build a successful season concert cycle in Prague with a large audience. Since 1996 Vladimír Válek has also held the post of conductor at the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, with whom he has appeared many times in the Czech Republic and gone on major international tours.

Besides his leading artistic functions, he is a guest at various symphony orchestras. He has performed in a number of major international cities (Amsterdam, Athens, Berlin, Bonn, Boston, Brussels, Cairo, Copenhagen, Istanbul, London, Madrid, Moscow, New York, Paris, Salzburg, Singapore, Soul, Tel Aviv, Tokyo, Vienna and Zurich). He has worked with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, the Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Tonkünstler orchestra in Vienna, the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Japan Philharmonic Orchestra and Yomiuri Symphony Orchestra.

As he was named main guest conductor Osaka Philharmonic Orchestra, Mr Válek has regularly performed with ensembles in Japan since the 2002/2003 season. He was also principal conductor of the Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra in Bratislava from the 2004/2005 season until 2007.

Mr Válek is frequently invited to perform at international festivals (Linz, Athens, Istanbul, Wroclaw, Montreaux, Lucerne, where he conducted a joint concert with Rafael Kubelík in 1990). He is a regular guest at Prague Spring, the Bratislava Music Festival and other major international festivals. In February 2008 he led the radio symphony orchestra's tour with concerts in Salzburg, Innsbruck, Stuttgart, Cologne and Luxembourg; in March he was a guest at the Israel Philharmonic and toured Japan for the ninth time, this time with the radio symphony orchestra and pianist Stanislav Bunin in late June and early July 2008.

Vladimír Válek has made over one thousand recordings for radio stations in Prague, Vienna, Leipzig, Hilversum and Zagreb. His discography contains over one hundred titles for Pony Canyon, Harmonia Mundi, Supraphon and Radioservis, which he made mainly with the radio symphony orchestra and the Czech Philharmonic. A recording of Ervín Schulhoff's piano concertos with soloist Jan Simon and the radio orchestra won the music critic's Cannes Classical Award at the international music industry trade fair Midem in 1996. The most recent projects to be completed are the complete symphonies of Antonín Dvořák and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, the orchestral works of Bedřich Smetana, Václav J. Tomášek's piano concertos with pianist Jan Simon and the Czech Radio Symphony Orchestra for Supraphon. An edition of Bohuslav Martinů's complete symphonies, recorded in co-operation with Czech Radio and Supraphon, has just been released.

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Sayaka Shoji

Sayaka Shoji Is a Japanese violinist who is known throughout the world. Born in 1983 to a family of artists, she spent her childhood in Sienna, Italy, where she studied at Accademia Musicale Chigiana. A scholarship allowed her to continue studying in Israel with Schlomo Mintz, and she completed her studies under Zakhar Bron at the Cologne University of Music. She has won a number of prestigious international competitions, including the Mozart Junior Competition in Vienna in 1995, the Wieniawski International Competition for Young Violinists in Poland in 1997 and the Viotti Valsesia International Competition in Italy in 1999. In that same year, at sixteen years of age, she established herself on the international music scene when she became the first Japanese and youngest ever winner of the Paganini Competition in Genoa.

Since then, Ms Shoji has regularly performed under the baton of conductors such as Zubin Mehta, Lorin Maazel, Yuri Temirkanov, Colin Davis, Semyon Bychkov, Vladimir Askhenazy, Charles Dutoit, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Neville Marriner, Riccardo Chailly, Pinchas Zukerman, Eliahu Inbal and Myungh-Whun Chung. She regularly performs at recitals and chamber concerts at renowned festivals (Salzburg, Lucerne, Verbier, Schleswig-Holstein, Evian, Estate Musicale del Garda, Fêtes Musicales in Touraine, La Folle Journée in Nantes and Tokyo), and her partners at chamber concerts have included Vadim Repin, Steven Isserlis, Mikhail Pletnev, Jiang Wang, Lang Lang, Lynn Harrell, Magdalena Kožená, Yefim Bronfan, Itamar Golan and Hélène Grimaud.

Her first tour of Japan with the St Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra and Yuri Temirkanov, in 2001, met with great success. This was followed by further collaboration with the conductor as well as regular performances in Japan - most recently in February 2008, when she performed with the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra. In 2005 and 2006 she went on an extensive tour of Asia and South America with the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra.

She made her U.S. debut in 2003 with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra and Zubin Mehta, and her first performance in New York was in 2004, with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and Lorin Maazel. In March 2008 she debuted with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, performing Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto in D Major.

Ms Shoji records for Deutsche Grammophon. Her debut compact disc with Zubin Mehta and the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra was released in July 2000 and contains compositions by Paganini, Chausson and Waxman. This was followed by two compact discs with pianist Itamar Golan: a live recording of a debut recital at the Louvre Auditorium in Paris (September 2001) and a disc featuring compositions by Prokofiev and Shostakovich (December 2003), and a CD of Mendelssohn and Tchaikovsky violin concertos recorded with Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and conductor Myung-Whun Chung (October 2005).

Sayaka Shoji plays on the 1715 "Joachim” Stradivari, lent to her by the Nippon Music Foundation.

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Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra

The Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra is one of the leading as well as one of the oldest orchestras in the Czech Republic. Its rich history starts in 1926 and is connected to the first broadcasts of Czech Radio's Radio Journal. Founder Josef Charvát and particularly composer and conductor Otakar Jeremiáš played crucial roles in these early days of the orchestra's existence. After 1945, the orchestra was transformed into a large symphony orchestra that major artists - such as Karel Ančerl, who later became the head of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, and particularly Alois Klíma - worked with as principal conductors. The radio symphony orchestra has regularly performed at the Prague Spring festival since 1947, and it has regularly travelled internationally since 1961. The 1970s were the era of the major Czech music interpreter and conductor Jaroslav Krombholc, who was replaced by František Vajnar. Václav Talich, Václav Neumann, Libor Pešek, Charles Münch, Franz Konwitschny, Hermann Scherchen, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Charles Mackerras and others have all hosted with the radio orchestra. Sergey Prokofiev, Ottorino Respighi, Arthur Honegger, Aram Khachaturian, Ernst Křenek and Krysztof Penderecki have presented their works here; contemporary music also always occupied an important place with the orchestra.

Since 1985, the orchestra has been led by Vladimír Válek, who the very next year travelled with the orchestra to Japan. The Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra is a regularly guest practically throughout Europe, and it has performed in South Korea, China, Taiwan and the United States. In the 2007/08 season it visited Vienna, Klagenfurt and Frankfurt; in Athens it performed Zemlinsky's opera Der Zwerg (The Dwarf) and Schoenberg's monodrama Erwartung (Expectation). In February 2008 the completed a tour with its principal conductor Vladimír Válek and soloists Jan Simon, Benjamin Schmid and Carlo Jans, where they performed to audiences in Salzburg, Innsbruck, Stuttgart, Cologne and Marnach (Luxembourg).

The orchestra finished the concert season with their ninth tour of Japan, with concerts at the Suntory Hall in Tokyo, Osaka Symphony Hall and other prestigious venues.

Since 2005 it has been the orchestra in residence at the Český Krumlov International Music Festival; besides its season at the Rudolfinum, it is also a regular guest at major Czech festivals - Prague Autumn, Moravian Autumn, Janáček's May and Smetana's Litomyšl. The orchestra also works with a number of renowned soloists (Mischa Maisky, Alexander Rudin, Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt, Raphael Oleg, Viktor Tretyakov, Josef Suk, Pierre Amoyal, Ferruccio Furlanetto, Gabriela Beňačková, Eva Urbanová, Simon Estes, Sharon Kam, Wolfgang Schulz, Hansjoerg Shellenberger, Mikhail Rudy, Ian Fountain, James Tocco, Ivan Moravec, Marián Lapšanský, Eugen Indjic, Jan Simon, Stanislav Bunin and Ivan Klánský).

The Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra regularly records for radio and on compact discs for Czech and international recording labels, including Supraphon, Pony Canyon, Radioservis, Clarton and Praga. In 2004 it recorded the complete symphonies of Antonín Dvořák, in 2005 the complete symphonies of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, and in 2006 it released the world premiere of Václav J. Tomášek's piano concertos with Jan Simon. In 2007, Supraphon released an extensive project - Smetana's orchestral works, and the latest result of the orchestra's recording work is the complete symphonies of Bohuslav Martinů, a co-production between Supraphon and Czech Radio. In 1996 the radio orchestra won the music critic's Cannes Classical Award at the international music industry trade fair Midem for its recording of Ervín Schulhoff's piano concertos with soloist Jan Simon. Via the international music exchange within the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), Czech Radio Symphony Orchestra's recordings reach hundreds of thousands of listeners around Europe and worldwide.

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