8/22/2008 | Christian Badea, Ludmila ...

Christian Badea

Christian Badea is one of the most sought-out conductors in Europe, the United States and Asia. He studied violin at the Bucharest Conservatory and studied conducting in Brussels, at the Mozarteum in Salzburg under Herbert von Karajan, and at the Juilliard School in New York - where one of his teachers was Leonard Bernstein.

Mr Badea is regularly invited to be a guest conductor at the world's leading orchestras. In Europe he has conducted the Royal Philharmonic and the BBC Symphony in London, the Gothenburg Symphony, Amsterdam Philharmonic and Radio Philharmonic in the Netherlands, the Beethovenhalle Orchestra in Bonn, the Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and the Orchestre de l'Ile de France in Paris, the Lyon National Orchestra, the RAI Orchestra in Torino , the Budapest Philharmonic and the National Orchestra of Spain in Madrid.

In Asia, Mr Badea has conducted the Hong Kong Philharmonic and toured Japan with the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra. In North America, he has been a guest at the Pittsburgh Symphony, Montreal Symphony, Atlanta Symphony, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony, Rochester Philharmonic and American Symphony.

Mr Badea's symphonic repertoire is very extensive, from Bach, Hayden, Mozart and Beethoven to 20th century composers - Zemlinsky, Schönberg, Webern, Honegger, Janáček, Bartók, Shostakovich, Sibelius, Stravinsky, Britten, Lutoslawski and Penderecki. He is particularly interested in 20th century French and American music. He has been in personal contact with a number of artists, including Leonard Bernstein, Samuel Barber, George Crumb, Frank Zappa, Mark Phillips, Steven Stucky, John Corigliano, Christopher Rouse and John Adams.

Ludmila Peterková

Ludmila Peterková is a leading Czech clarinetist, professor at the Prague Conservatory and personality in popularizing classical music.

She studied clarinet at the Prague Conservatory (Jiří Stárek) and the Music Faculty at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (Štěpán Koutník). Following this, she completed a one year internship at the Conservatiore National Supérieur in Paris (Michel Arrignon), classes at the Accademia Chigiana in Sienna, Italy (Giuseppe Garbarino) and Lugano, Switzerland (Karl Leister). Upon a number of occasions she was a member of Sándor Végh's International Academy of Chamber Music, where she worked under the direction of Maurice Bourgue, Sergio Azzolini and other major names. Since the age of 27 she has been a professor at the Prague Conservatory and after working as an instructor in Japan and South Korea, she established her own clarinet courses in the western Bohemian town of Domažlice.

Ludmila Peterková was the laureate of the international Prague Spring competition in 1991, and won the Classic 1994 and Hudební rozhledy music magazine prizes for her premiere performance of Clarinettino by Ondřej Kukal. She was also a finalist in the Chamber Music Competition in Osaka (1996, In modo camerale ensemble).

From 1994 till 1999 she was a member of the Solistes Européens Luxembourg, and in 1994 she also became a clarinet soloist for the newly founded Prague Chamber Philharmonic directed by conductor Jiří Bělohlávek. She played with the philharmonic for nearly four years and has continued to work with the orchestra after her departure. Between 1996 and 2001 she made joint recordings of concertos by Milhaud, Copland, Busoni, Rossini, Bruch and Stamic for the recording companies Lotos and especially Supraphon, with whom she has had an exclusive contract since 2000. The compact disc with compositions by Rossini, Mendelssohn and Bruch won the Harmonie magazine prize for the best Czech recording in 2001.

Ms Peterková has recorded over ten titles; besides the concertos listed above, her recordings of trios for the violin, clarinet and piano (in 2000, together with Gabriela Demeterová and Markéta Cibulková), and particularly her latest popular title Playful Clarinet (2007, with pianist Irina Kondratenko. Another noteworthy project was one for the U.S. label Angel, in which she, Shlomo Mintz, Lucas Foss and others recorded Poul Ruders' Credo.

Nicolas Baldeyrou

Young French clarinettist Nicolas Baldeyrou is launching his notable career with a series of solo concerts in France and abroad. He was 14 when he was admitted to the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Paris, from where he graduated in 1998. He is the laureate of a number of major international competitions (ARD in Munich, Dos Hermanas in Spain, ICA Young Artists Competition in the United States, the Carl Nielsen competition in Odense, Denmark). In 1995 he became a member of the European Union Youth Orchestra (conductor Bernard Haitink), in 2000 - 2001 he was a member of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra (conductor Claudio Abbado) and in 2000 - 2007 was in the French National Orchestra.

He works with renowned orchestras such as the Bavarian Radio Orchestra, the Tokyo and St Petersburg Philharmonics, Prague Philharmonia, Auvergne Orchestra and Orchestre de Cannes-Côte d'Azur and with internationally acclaimed conductors: Carlo Maria Giulini, Colin Davis, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Mstislav Rostropovich, Daniel Harding, Claudio Abbado, Bernard Haitink and Jiří Bělohlávek. He has performed solo recitals at the Cité de la musique in Paris, New York City's Carnegie Hall, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Palais des Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles, the Cologne Philharmonic Orchestra's concert hall, the Concert House in Vienna, the Mozarteum in Salzburg, at the Colmar and La Folle Journée festivals in Nantes and Tokyo.

Czech Philharmonic Orchestra

The Czech Philharmonic Orchestra's first concert took place at the Rudolfinum on 4 January 1896 and was conducted by Antonín Dvořák. In 1901 the first principal conductor of the independent orchestra was Ludvík Čelanský and from 1903 till 1918 it was led by Dr. Vilém Zemánek, who despite the orchestra's grave financial situation was able to maintain and stabilise its position on the Prague music scene. In the first year of peacetime following World War I, the legendary Václav Talich became the principal conductor of the PSO and, with a brief interruption in 1931 - 1933, he led the orchestra up until 1941. Talich conducted a total of 924 concerts with the PSO, and is rightly considered the founder of the orchestra's interpretive tradition. Following the brief but artistically very fruitful period Rafael Kubelík was at the head of the PSO (1942 - 1948), Karel Ančerl took on the role of principal conductor for the next 18 years (1950 - 1968) and under his direction, the PSO earned its international reputation as a leading orchestra. He continued with his predecessors' focusing the repertoire on Czech music, classical and particularly contemporary, and enhanced this with the works of foreign artists (Stravinsky, Strauss, Bartók, Shostakovich, Prokofiev). The years Ančerl directed the PSO are considered the period the orchestra flourished most artistically. Following Ančerl's emigration to Canada, Václav Neumann took up the conductor's baton at the PSO. Neumann's name is connected with a long-term phase (up until 1990) when the orchestra was at a stably high level and successfully held to its traditions.

Following the political changes in the country, the post of principal conductor has changed hands several times in brief succession: Jiří Bělohlávek (1990 - 1992), Gerd Albrecht (1993 - 1996) and Vladimir Ashkenazy (1996 - 2003), who brought a number of fresh projects to the programme and significantly revived the orchestra's international reputation. The PSO entered the 2003/2004 season with a new principal conductor, Zdeněk Mácal (1936) who, at the height of his artistic and personal experiences, stood before the orchestra that launched his conducting career in 1966 - 1968. Zdeněk Mácal stepped down from his post as principal conductor in September 2007.

From the start of its existence, hosting internationally recognised personalities (such as Grieg, Ysaÿe, Sarasate, Rachmaninov, Nikisch or Gustav Mahler who conducted the world premiere of his Seventh Symphony with the philharmonic in Prague in 1908) increased the credit of the PSO.

This is particularly the case for noted conductors who have repeatedly worked with the orchestra: Kleiber, Walter, Zemlinsky, Szell, Münch, Mravinsky, Bernstein, Stokowski, Konwitschny, Celibidache, Rozhdestvensky, Kondrashin, Maazel, Mehta, Haitink, Abbado, Mutti and countless others.