My Country
29. November at 19:30
Venue:
Kategorie koncertu:
Programme:
- Bedřich SMETANA: My Country (composer’s own arrangement for four-hand piano)
About programme:
When a large orchestra was not available, composers resorted to arranging their works for piano, either for two or four hands. Smetana’s own version of his famous cycle of symphonic poems My Country was certainly heard in many salons of the time, and its popularity has not diminished even now, in 2024, when we commemorate the bicentenary of the birth of this Czech great. It will also be performed by pianists Kristina Kasíková and Jan Dušek at a concert in Mariánské Lázně.
The concert takes place as part of the Year of Czech Music.
Performers:
Kristina Kasíková – piano
Kristina Kasíková graduated from the Janáček Conservatory in Ostrava in the class of Mgr. Monika Tugendliebová and the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, where she studied under Prof. Ivan Klánský. During her studies she became a scholarship holder of the Czech Music Fund Foundation. She is a laureate of the Beethoven’s Hradec International Piano Competition. She has repeatedly appeared as a soloist with the Janáček Philharmonic Orchestra Ostrava. Apart from the Czech Republic, she has also performed in France, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Latvia and the USA. She often performs in duo with her husband, Martin Kasík, with whom she recorded a CD of Antonín Dvořák’s Slavonic Dances. Since 2005 she has been teaching at the Jaroslav Ježek Conservatory in Prague.
Jan Dušek – piano
Jan Dušek (born 11 April 1985) graduated from the Teplice Conservatory (piano, composition). In 2004-2009 he studied composition at the Academy of Performing Arts (Hanuš Bartoň), in 2012 he completed his doctoral studies in the same field. Since 2012 he has been working as an assistant professor at the Department of Composition at the Faculty of Music of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. As a pianist, he has participated in several masterclasses and workshops (Cyprien Katsaris, Irina Ossipova, Angela Hewitt, Lilit Grygorian, Maria João Pires), expanded his knowledge in 2013-14 by private piano studies in Vienna with Robert Lehrbaumer, in 2015 in Paris with Xiao-Mei Zhu and since 2016 in London with Gordon Fergus-Thompson. He has won prizes and honorable mentions in competitions (Concertino Praga, International Piano Competition B. He regularly makes recordings of Czech music for Czech Radio, for which he has recorded, for example, the complete piano works of Rudolf Karel. In 2015 he released a CD with soprano Irena Troupová with the complete song works of Viktor Ullmann. He performs regularly at international festivals (Prague Spring, Eternal Hope, Junge Kunstler Beyreuth, etc.).
In 2006, he was awarded 1st prize at the Generace composition competition for his composition “…in seven days I will send rain down on the earth…” and in 2007 he was again awarded 1st prize at the same competition for his composition “Graduation for organ”. In the 2008 NUBERG competition he won the People’s Choice Award for his composition “Chalomot Yehudi’im”, and a year later he received the Gideon Klein Prize for the same composition. In 2010, his melodrama “Prague Walker” was awarded 2nd prize in the Competition for Young Artists announced by the Prague 1 Municipal District, and in the same competition he was awarded 3rd prize in 2012 for his piano cycle “Prague Bells”. For his music for the silent film “The Child of the Ghetto” he won the Public Prize in the NuBERG 2011 competition, and for his music for the feature-length silent film Ost und West he won the Young People’s Prize in the following year of the same competition. His compositions have been interpreted by leading soloists and conductors (e.g. clarinetist Irvin Venyš, flutist Monika Štreitová, conductor Petr Louženský) as well as chamber ensembles and orchestras (e.g. Nederlands Blazers Ensemble, Holland; Epoque Quartet; BERG Orchestra; Prague Chamber Philharmonic; Prague Philharmonic Choir, etc.). In 2021 he co-founded the Lieder Company, which aims to raise the profile of the song recital format and promote song literature. Since June 2024, he has been the director of the West Bohemian Symphony Orchestra in Mariánské Lázně.
