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It's not every day one can attend a concert featuring several dozen compositions. Of course, festivals are ideal moments for special experiences. Under the guidance of Ivo Kahánek and the musicologist David Beveridge, audience members and young pianists will experience a marathon concert at which nearly all of Antonín Dvořák's music for solo piano and for piano four-hands will be heard. His piano works will be played in five topically arranged blocks that will encompass everything not already heard at the solo recitals of Iva Kahánek and the Ardašev Piano Duo.
Piano compositions are not in general among Dvořák's best known music - an exception perhaps being the extremely popular Humoresque No. 7 in G Flat Major. Still, he devoted himself to the piano continually, and he also frequently composed at the keyboard. This piano marathon is a special opportunity to get to know Dvořák's pianistic thinking at maximum intensity, magnified by insightful performing.
The patron of the event is the excellent pianist and popular Dvořák Prague Festival guest Ivo Kahánek. He already won over the festival public years ago as the curator of its Chamber Series and again last year performing Dvořák's Piano Concerto, for the recording of which he won a BBC Music Magazine Award. The marathon will also be an opportunity for the festival debuts of the pianists Marek Kozák, Natálie Schwamová, Matouš Zukal, Pavel Zemen, and Kristýna Znamenáčková.
Kristýna Znamenáčková is a graduate of the Brno Conservatoire, and she completed her Master's Degree at the Janáček Academy of Performing Arts in Brno. She is now pursuing doctoral studies there with a focus on the piano music of Bohuslav Martinů. In 2015 she won first prize at the Bohuslav Martinů Foundation Competition and a special prize for her interpretation of the Piano Sonata, H. 350. As a laureate, in 2017 she got a chance to introduce herself in the Suk Hall at the Rudolfinum and to appear at Bohuslav Martinů Days to perform his Piano Quintet No. 1. A year later, she appeared at celebrations of the 100th anniversary of the founding of Czechoslovakia with a solo recital of Czech music at the concert hall of the National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan. She appears as a soloist and in chamber music ensembles. With Ensemble Opera Diversa and the pianists Lucie Schinzelová and Pavla Marková, in 2019 she recorded Concentus Biiugis and Rustica Musa II by the composer Jan Novák. She participates in the development of cultural life in and around her home town Boskovice, and she is actively involved with the cultural community centre Prostor. She also works as an accompanist and piano teacher at the Brno Conservatoire.
The pianist Pavel Zemen graduated from the České Budějovice Conservatoire, and in 2014 he was admitted to the Janáček Academy of Performing Arts in Brno. Already during his first year of study there, he earned noteworthy success at international competitions including first prize at Notes in Harmony in Bettona, Italy, and first prize and the title of overall winner at the Young Academy Award International Competition in Rome. He appeared at the Janáček Brno Music Festival with a matinee recital, and a year later he earned a prestigious scholarship at the YMFE Competition. At the Ibiza International Piano Competition he won a special prize for performing the Samuel Barber Piano Sonata, and he won first prize and an award for the best Czech participant at the Leoš Janáček International Competition in Brno. He has appeared at the Prague Spring Festival and the International Chamber Music Festival in Český Krumlov. As a soloist, he has collaborated with the South Czech Philharmonic and the Moravian Philharmonic in Olomouc. He gives concerts regularly both around the Czech Republic and abroad. Since 2017 he has been a teacher at the Brno Conservatoire.
Suk Hall is the newest hall in the Neo-Renaissance Rudolfinum. It was created from 1940 to 1942 during modifications of the adjacent Dvořák Hall, as a smaller concert hall. In designing the interior decor architects Antonín Engel and Bohumír Kozák took inspiration from the original style of the Rudolfinum’s architects Josef Zítek and Josef Schulz, thus Suk Hall fits perfectly into the original composition of the building. During the most recent modifications in 2015, according to a design by architect Petr Hrůša, the acoustics of the hall and its connection to the Rudolfinum’s atrium were improved while respecting the historical value of these premises, protected as a historical landmark. Suk Hall has a new grand piano and continues to be intended mainly for performances of chamber music.