Rossini, Bruch and Bartholdy as performed by SOČR at the Dvořák Prague Festival
Clarinet player Ludmila Peterková, violist Maxim Rysanov, conductor Juraj Valčuha and the members of the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra will meet on the stage of Dvořák Hall at the Rudolfinum on Wednesday, 1 September as part of the 3rd year of the Dvořák Prague Festival to present the overture to the opera William Tell by Gioachino Rossini, Bruch's Concerto for Clarinet, Viola, and Orchestra in E Minor and Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy's "Scottish" Symphony No 3. Czech Radio 3 – Vltava will offer a live broadcast from this concert.
Slovak-born Juraj Valčuha studied composition, conducting and cimbalom at the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava. He then continued studying conducting for two years in St Petersburg under Ilya Musin. In 1998 he relocated to Paris, where he studied conducting at the Conservatoire National Supérieur with Janos Fürst. He has worked with top symphonies in France, as well as the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra in London, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Munich Philharmonic, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, National Symphony in Washington and also the Czech Philharmonic. He has taken on musical theatre with such ensembles as the Bavarian State Opera, the Venetian Teatro La Fenice or the Opera in Nancy. Since November 2009 he has been the Chief Conductor of the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI in Torino.
Ludmila Peterková, a laureate of the Prague Spring 1991 international competition, studied clarinet at the Prague Conservatory and HAMU. She completed a year-long stint at the Conservatoire National Supérieur in Paris and various short courses with some of the top clarinettists (K. Leister, M. Arrignon). Today she is a professor at the Prague Conservatory and since 2007 she has been putting on her own courses in Domažlice in West Bohemia. She has performed in various countries all around Europe and has also put on important foreign concerts, such as in Japan in 2005, where she spent three quarters of a year. Since 2000 she has recorded exclusively for Supraphon. Her CDs, with recordings of Rossini, Mendelssohn and Bruch have received the prestigious Harmonie award for best recording of the year and in 2007 her most recent to date was released – the highly successful title Playful Clarinet. She also specialises in old music.
Maxim Rysanov is recognised as one of the best and at the same time one of the most charismatic violists in the world. In the past year he has won the "Young Artist of the Year" award from the magazine Gramophone and taken part in the BBC show New Generation Artists, which supports young artists. Originally from the Ukraine, he currently lives in London. He is regularly invited to perform at festivals and in prestigious concert halls in Great Britain and abroad, both as a soloist and a chamber musician. All of Rysanov's most recent solo recordings have received Gramophone's "Editor's Choice" award. These include the viola work of Brahms, concerts by J. Tavener and G. Kancheli and a CD of recitals with Evelyn Chang. Much of Rysanov's activity deals with contemporary output. He also conducts.
