Young International stars open New York's Czech Week

Jiří Vodička, a concertmaster, soloist, and chamber player, is one of the most important and sought-after Czech violinists, but it would not have taken much for him to have devoted himself to Latin-American dance instead of the violin. At age 12 he finally decided to devote himself fully to playing the highest-pitched string instrument. About his dancing, he comments coyly: “I got something from doing that, possibly in the area of feel for rhythm.” At the unusually early age of 14, he was admitted to the Institute for Artistic Studies at the University of Ostrava, where he studied under the renowned pedagogue Zdeněk Gola. He graduated in 2007 with a master’s degree. Even earlier, he had attracted attention by winning many competitions including the Kocian International Violin Competition and Prague Junior Note. In 2002 he also won the prize for the best participant at violin classes led by Václav Hudeček, with whom he later gave dozens of concerts all around the Czech Republic. His success continued as an adult, for example winning first and second prizes at the world-famous competition Young Concert Artists (2008) held in Leipzig and New York.

A father of five, he is the owner of the Wassermann Media production company, which he founded during the Coronavirus pandemic. In the 2023/2024 season, he has entered his ninth season as the concertmaster of the Czech Philharmonic. He has made solo appearances not only with Czech orchestras like the Prague Philharmonia or the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, but also with the Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra, the New Philharmonic Orchestra of Westphalia, and the Wuhan Philharmonic Orchestra.

His professional activities are of greater breadth, however. In 2014, he recorded his debut solo album “Violino Solo” on the Supraphon label, and crossover fans can hear him on his worldwide Vivaldianno tour. He recently appeared at Prague Castle with Tomáš Kačo on the occasion of the state award presentation ceremony, he was formerly a member of the Smetana Trio (two more Supraphon CDs). He has performed chamber music with the outstanding Czech pianists Martin Kasík, Ivo Kahánek, Ivan Klánský, David Mareček, and Miroslav Sekera. Many of the concerts of the “Czech Paganini”, as Vodička is sometimes called because of his extraordinary technical skill, have been recorded by Czech Television, Czech Radio, or the German broadcasting company ARD. Besides all of that he teaches at the University of Ostrava.

The instrument he plays, a 1767 Italian violin made by Joseph Gagliano, came into his possession by what he calls “good old-fashioned patronage”. He received the violin for long-term use from the Czech Philharmonic’s former chief conductor Jiří Bělohlávek.

Trumpeter and composer Wynton Marsalis (b. 1961) was born and raised in New Orleans, the cradle of jazz music. Marsalis has performed with legends of the genre and taken his art around the world. Having started a series of concerts at New York’s Lincoln Center in the late eighties, Marsalis eventually became the Center’s artistic director. He played in the Czech Republic for the first time in 1991 and has since been a frequent visitor to Prague and Brno, performing with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, and including the works of Dvořák in his concert programs. A promoter and advocate of jazz music, Marsalis gives workshops for young musicians, and he is the recipient of numerous awards including the Pulitzer Prize, several Grammy Awards, and various honorary positions. 

Marsalis’ compositions combine jazz influences with the methods of classical music. Dvořák was inspired by a similar idea when he declared that “the new American school of music must strike its roots deeply into its own soil,” and Marsalis himself “bridges the traditions of the Old and New World.” String Quartet No. 1 “At the Octoroon Balls” was composed in 1995. “Octoroon” was a derogatory term for people of one-eighth Black descent; in a racially divided country, even this small fraction of Black heritage was enough to result in exclusion from society. The seven-movement composition is inspired by Marsalis’ upbringing in New Orleans, a city of social, cultural and political contrasts, but also of mutual influence and compromise. “A ball is a ritual and a dance,” Marsalis has said of the piece. “Everybody was in their finest clothing. At the Octoroon Balls there was an interesting cross-section of life. People from different strata of society came together in pursuit of pleasure and fulfillment. The music brought people together.”

English composer Edward Elgar (1857–1934) occupies a special place in the musical history of his country. His father, a music seller in Worcester and local organist, encouraged his son’s interest in music but lacked the funds necessary to furnish him with a proper musical education. Nonetheless, Elgar learned to play several instruments passably, and worked as a violin teacher, choirmaster and organist in his hometown. In composition he was an autodidact, only achieving his breakthrough in 1899 with the orchestral Enigma Variations, Op. 36. 

Elgar stood apart from the cultural life of the big cities for much of his life, yet he was the recipient of honorary doctorates from the universities of Cambridge, Yale and Oxford. As a violinist, he played in a morning performance of Dvořák’s Stabat Mater under the baton of the composer at Worcester Music Festival on September 11, 1884, before giving a performance of his own Symphony No. 6 in D major later that same day. Dvořák’s music thrilled the British composer; in a letter to his friend Charles William Buck, a physician and amateur cellist, Elgar wrote: “I wish you could hear Dvořák’s music. It is simply ravishing, so tuneful and clever and the orchestration is wonderful: no matter how few instruments he uses it never sounds thin. I cannot describe it, it must be heard.” Elgar rarely composed for chamber ensembles; he tried several times to write a string quartet, but continually postponed the work. In 1900, he pledged to write a piece for a quartet founded by Russian violinist Adolph Brodsky, but only fulfilled his promise 18 years later. Although dedicated to the Brodsky Quartet, Elgar’s String Quartet in E minor, Op. 83, was played for the first time in London’s Wigmore Hall on May 21, 1919, by an ensemble assembled specially for the occasion and named the British Quartet.

Elgar’s romantic musical language is often compared to that of Dvořák. Their works have so much in common that they are often featured in programs together – a frequent pairing is the two composers’ cello concertos, or Elgar’s Serenade in E minor, Op. 20, combined with Dvořák’s Serenade in E major, Op. 22, both of which are among their authors’ most popular works. Originally, serenades were conceived of as short musical greetings, such as those performed by amorous cavaliers under the windows of their beloved. The instrumental serenade came into being as a cyclical form recalling those romantic evening performances, replete with the arrival of musicians, gallant courtship, and love songs. Dvořák composed his Serenade in E major in May 1875, during the period of his initial success as a composer. The premiere of this work of joyous well-being and pleasure in music-making took place on December 10, 1876, at Prague’s Žofín Palace, under the direction of Adolf Čech, performed by a combined orchestra of the Czech Provisional and Royal Provincial German Theaters under the name “Filharmonie”.

“American” String Quartet in F major, Op. 96, by Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904) is a fruit of the American period of the composer’s life and work. The piece was written immediately upon the completion of his Symphony in E minor “From the New World”, Op. 95, during a summer holiday spent in the small town of Spillville, where a group of settlers from Bohemia lived. The quartet reflects the symphony’s formation of thematic material yet is its opposite in intimacy of expression. The lyrical melody of the second movement is “sung” in typical Dvořák style. The Kneisl Quartet premiered the piece on January 1, 1894, in Boston; exactly one year later, they played it for the fiftieth time, and other ensembles were quick to follow suit by including the piece in their repertoire.