The pianist Ivo Kahánek is one of today’s most successful Czech performers. After graduating from the Janáček Conservatoire in Ostrava and the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, he furthered his education at London’s famed Guildhall School and at a number of masterclasses. At the age of 25, he became the overall winner of the Prague Spring International Music Competition. Besides giving solo recitals, he appears with renowned orchestras (Czech Philharmonic, BBC Symphony Orchestra, WDR Symphony Orchestra in Cologne) and conductors (Vladimir Ashkenazy, Pinchas Steinberg, Jiří Bělohlávek). In 2007 at London’s famed BBC Proms, he performed the Piano Concerto No. 4 (“Incantation”) by Bohuslav Martinů. In November 2014 he became just the second Czech pianist in history (after Rudolf Firkušný) to appear with the Berlin Philharmonic. Sir Simon Rattle conducted the performance. He has a number of acclaimed recordings to his credit with the music of Frédéric Chopin and Leoš Janáček among other composers. His CD from last year with piano concertos by Dvořák and Martinů has been awarded this year by the prestigious British music journal BBC Music Magazine as the Recording of the Year in the Concerto category.

The Lobkowicz Trio comprises violinist Jan Mráček, cellist Ivan Vokáč, and pianist Lukáš Klánský, all very talented young musicians (not one of them having reached his thirtieth birthday), esteemed not only as chamber players but as soloists. Their greatest joint success has been first prize and the audience prize in the Johannes Brahms International Competition in Pörtschach, Austria in 2014. The name of the ensemble refers to links of this noble family to the music world, which its members sponsored generously. Ludwig van Beethoven, for example, dedicated to them his Triple Concerto for Piano, Violin, Cello, and Orchestra, one of the highpoints of the trio repertoire. The Lobkowicz Trio was granted the right to use the family name by one of its current members, Mr. Jaroslav Lobkowicz.

Since 2004 Jan Fišer has been concertmaster of the Prague Philharmonia. He scored one of his first great successes performing with a large ensemble in 2000 when he debuted with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. He gives concerts both in the Czech Republic and abroad, for example in Germany, Austria, Italy, France, Slovenia, Poland, Japan, and the United States. Also part of his resumé is participation in masterclasses led by Pinchas Zukerman, Gil Shaham, and Joseph Silverstein. He records for both television and radio, and as one of five laureates shared in the compact disc A Tribute to Jaroslav Kocian for the fortieth anniversary of the Kocian International Violin Competition. He often performs in recitals especially with pianist Ivo Kahánek, with whom he founded the Trio Concertino which in 2013 changed its name to the Dvořák Trio.

After studies at the conservatoire in Brno Irvin Venyš devoted himself to the clarinet at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, where his principal teachers were Jiří Hlaváč and Vlastimil Mareš. He completed his education with a year’s study residence at the Conservatoir Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris in the prestigious class of Michel Arrignon. Currently he is serving as a teacher at his alma mater. In addition to his numerous live performances, he has been recording – most recently for example for Czech Radio, Czech Television, Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk, and Arco Diva. His performing range extends from the classical clarinet repertoire through extremely demanding compositions of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries to folklore.