Interview with Orchestra General Director Jan Simon

Vladimír Válek is stepping down as principal conductor with the end of the PRSO’s 84th season. What do you regard as his most important artistic contribution to the orchestra? And how often will he appear with it in the coming season?

Thanks to his 26 years tenure as principal director of the PRSO, Vladimír Válek has become an essential part of the orchestra’s entire history. Through the strength of his personality, he was able to push through his artistic and interpretative aims, ensure that excellent new musicians joined, and increased the playing discipline of members, which is necessary to do quality work. In his time, the orchestra significantly altered the focus of its activities in public concerts both at home and abroad. And we cannot forget that Vladimír Válek succeeded in building up such a position in the PRSO that nobody could doubt him, even in periods of great organisational change and cost-cutting measures, especially after 1989. However, the change of principal conductor does not mean the end of co-operation between Vladimír Válek and the PRSO. We are very pleased that he has accepted the title “honorary conductor of the PRSO” and that we will meet him again at two concerts for season-ticket holders in the new season.

The new season, the 85th, again includes 15 concerts for season-ticket holders. Which compositions have you included either due to dramaturgical ambition or to be pioneering?

We definitely have no ambitions to be pioneering. Time and interpretive experience have succeeded in testing pieces that deserve to be performed, or which have been placed in the archives and become more or less lexical items; without them, however, general musical development would be unthinkable. Only rarely is it possible to discover, so-called, a piece or a composer whose importance has remained hidden after a generation and who, with the passing of time, become part of the repertoire thanks to the industriousness of certain individuals. But that said, there are examples, the most important of which is probably the relationship of Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy to the work of Johann Sebastian Bach. So then, a tip for the coming season? Tchaikovsky’s Manfred, Scriabin’s piano concerto…

I’m sure you’ve also taken into account the suggestions of individual guests – which have grabbed or pleased you?

Our new principal conductor Ondrej Lenárd asked for Mahler’s Song of the Earth, a wonderful piece with the greatest inner strength. Permanent guest conductor Ronald Zollman had a lot of ideas linked to the Francophone musical world, which is why we’ll feature Metáboles by Henri Dutilleux. A concert of film music by Czech composers, part of a cycle initiated by the EBU, will definitely be beautiful. But I take pleasure in every piece which, thanks to its content and how it is interpreted, brings our listeners joy, an experience.

What artists can we look forward to?

In terms of conductors, as well as the PRSO’s new principal conductor Ondrej Lenárd and its main guest conductor Ronald Zollman, we will welcome Maxim Shostakovich, Aleksandar Marković, Tomáš Hanus, Tomáš Brauner, who this year won the Mitropoulos Prize, and Stanislav Vavřínek. As for soloists, we will see the likes of Simona Šaturová, Vladimír Chmelo, Roman Janál, Hugues Leclère, Ivo Kahánek, Ivan Ženatý, new PRSO soloist Jan Mráček, Jiří Bárta, and Petr Nouzovský.

Will public dress rehearsals continue?

I’m very glad that this tradition has taken on a life of its own and that there is amazing interest in the dress rehearsals. With some exaggeration, I say that we always have two concerts: morning and evening. What does annoy me is that the Rudolfinum is used so much that this season we’ve had to move the public dress rehearsals to 9:30 (as was the case in the past). I’m aware that it’s early, but the concert hall belongs to the Czech Philharmonic, which naturally sets the time-table of the Dvořák Hall to suit its own priorities.

And when will we see the PRSO itself? You’ve got foreign trips ahead of you.

Definitely, immediately after the end of the 2010/2011 season! In June, the orchestra is performing at the Smetana’s Litomyšl international opera festival, and it has a concert at the Europäische Wochen IMF in Passau. In July, we continue a cycle of Dvořák symphonies at Wiesbaden in Germany with conductor Zdeněk Mácal. The PRSO will also perform two concerts with Vladimír Válek at the MDR Musiksommer music festival: it will play Smetana’s “My Country” in Weimar and in Bad Elster. Another chapter entirely comes with our residence at the Český Krumlov IMF, where at this year’s 20th edition the PRSO will perform with the most important guests: tenor Ramón Vargas, cellist Mischa Maisky, and the face of the anniversary festival, Placido Domingo. I think that’s a very nice menu. In the meantime, there will be a well-deserved holiday and in September we return to the Rudolfinum, the recording studio, and our travels. In October, Belgium and Switzerland, with conductor Daniel Raiskin, await us.

Speaking of recordings, the renovation of the recording studio at Vinohradská 12 is coming to a conclusion soon. Can we look forward to interesting recordings and above all PRSO CDs?

Unfortunately, the renovation at Studio 1 on has been extended. There were some mistakes at the very start of the project, it’s annoying. We don’t know the precise completion date. But that won’t prevent us from creating new recordings. Probably the most essential project which is in train right now is the complete symphonies of Miroslav Kabeláč, conducted by Marko Ivanović. It’s precisely the kind of project that a “public service” orchestra should be devoting itself to. The task is to record the works of an author who belongs inseparably to the basic values of musical development, and not only in the national context, and who has not yet been understood in all his complexity. It’s wonderful music whose time in all its fullness is just coming, as was the case with for example the work of Erwin Schulhoff in the past.