A CHAMBER MUSIC MASTERCLASS WITH MEMBERS OF THE VIENNA PHILHARMONIC

Chamber music is the noblest performing discipline. It is enormously difficult to develop the ability to listen to one’s musical colleagues, to react to their breathing, to perceive time and sound, and at the same time to build consensus for one’s own musical ideas, and that is why chamber ensembles need a lot of time for the players to become accustomed to each other. It is said that whoever has not gone through playing chamber music is not a complete musician. 

This will again be proven by chamber music masterclasses led by three members of the Vienna Philharmonic, violinists Milan Šetena and Martin Kubik and cellist Edison Pashko. For the classes, they have selected works for different combinations of instruments – Dvořák’s String Quartet No. 10 in E flat major, Brahms’s String Quintet No. 2 in G major, and a Schulhoff’s String Sextet for two violins, two violas, and two cellos. And since, as we have said, chamber music takes time, the masterclasses will be spread over several days, climaxing on 23 September 2024 with an appearance by the individual ensembles at a concert at The Academy of Performing Arts in Prague.

Those interested in active participation can apply by sending a CV (max. 900 characters) to the email address stehlikova@dvorakovapraha.cz by 31 July 2023. The age limit for participants is 28.

Public masterclasses are yet another way that the Academy of Classical Music at the Dvořák Prague Festival is working to promote the education of musicians. As an auxiliary programme in the series For the Future, it gives young musicians the chance to play before exceptional artists and to consult on their views on the interpretation of a work with performers who have invaluable experience on the world’s great stages. A masterclass is a unique opportunity for the public to witness the final phase of preparing an interpretation. Rather than a usual lesson, it is an exchange of artistic opinions. It gives an exciting insight into the final phase of a young artist’s preparation before the moment when her or she appears in the concert arena with a finished interpretive conception in order to share an artistic opinion with the public.