Czech Chamber Music Society • Bennewitz Quartet

Bariton Roman Hoza studied at the Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Brno and spent a year at the Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst in Vienna. In 2015 and 2016, he was a member of the Opera Studio within the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Düsseldorf. After returning home, he was engaged as a soloist at the National Theatre in Brno, where he portrayed a number of major baritone roles (Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Guglielmo, Rossini’s Figaro, Donizetti’s Belcore, and others). He has appeared as a guest at the National Theatre in Prague (Mozart’s Figaro, Rossini’s Dandini, Donizetti’s Mamma Agata), the National Moravian-Silesian Theatre in Ostrava (Thomas’s Hamlet), the J. K. Tyl Theatre in Pilsen (Hamlet, Lehár’s Danilo), the Opéra national de Lyon, the Gothenburg Opera House, and elsewhere. In 2019, Roman Hoza returned to Düsseldorf to perform as Dandini. Since the 2020/2021 season, he has been a Deutsche Oper am Rhein soloist.

Martinů Voices chamber choir was founded in 2010. While its main artistic focus has been on top-quality interpretation of chamber choral works encompassing the time span from the 19^th to 21^st centuries, the choirʼs repertoire also includes compositions from the Renaissance, Baroque and Classical periods. The ensemble is made up of professional singers working under the direction of conductor Lukáš Vasilek.

The choir appear regularly at the Czech Republicʼs major music festivals. Apart from its own concert programmes, the choir has likewise been involved in a number of joint projects. In 2014 it joined the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra and Jiří Bělohlávek, in a production of Bohuslav Martinůʼs opera What Men Live By. This particular collaboration earned them a nomination for the prestigious International Opera Award (2015). Another major achievement for the choir was their concert appearance alongside the prominent British ensemble, the Tallis Scholars, at the Dvořák Prague Festival in 2016.

The art of the choir has been documented by several CD albums; the most important of them, which includes a selection of choral works by Jan Novák, was published in 2014 by Supraphon. In 2016 the choir made a recording of Jakub Jan Rybaʼs cantata Stabat Mater (Nibiru Publishers) which earned it the “Diapason dʼOr choice” (April 2017).

Lukáš Vasilek studied conducting and musicology. Since 2007, he has been the chief choirmaster of the Prague Philharmonic Choir (PPC). Most of his artistic work with the choir consists of rehearsing and performing the a cappella repertoire and preparing the choir to perform in large-scale cantatas, oratorios, and operatic projects, during which he collaborates with world-famous conductors and orchestras (such as the Berlin Philharmonic, the Czech Philharmonic, the Israel Philharmonic, and the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic).

Besides leading the PPC, he also engages in other artistic activities, especially in collaboration with the vocal ensemble Martinů Voices, which he founded in 2010. As a conductor or choirmaster, his name appears on a large number of recordings that the PPC have made for important international labels (Decca Classics, Supraphon); in recent years, he has been devoting himself systematically to the recording of Bohuslav Martinů’s choral music. His recordings have received extraordinary acclaim abroad and have earned honours including awards from the prestigious journals Gramophone, BBC Music Magazine, and Diapason.

The Bennewitz Quartet, bearing the name of the violinist and director of a music conservatory in Prague Antonín Bennewitz since 1998, is one of the top international chamber ensembles, a status confirmed not only by their victories in two prestigious competitions – Osaka in 2005 and Prémio Paolo Borciani, Italy in 2008, but also by the acclaim of the critics. As early as 2006, the German Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung wrote: “... the music was remarkable not just for its clarity of structure, but for the beautiful tonal palette and purity of intonation in its execution. Only very rarely does one experience such skilfully crafted and powerful harmonies... Great art.” The ensemble has received various awards on the Czech music scene as well. In 2004 the quartet was awarded The Prize of the Czech Chamber Music Society and in 2019 the four musicians won the Classic Prague Award for the Best Chamber Music Performance of the year. 

The quartet currently performs at major venues both in the Czech Republic and abroad (Wigmore Hall London, Musikverein Wien, Konzerthaus Berlin, Rudolfinum and others), and is regularly invited to festivals such as the Salzburger Festspiele, Luzerne Festival or the Prague Spring. The group has had the privilege of working with the outstanding artists: Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Alexander Melnikov, Vadim Gluzman, Isabel Charisius and others.

The Bennewitz Quartet especially enjoys playing and performing on the Czech domestic music scene. Particular highlights have included their cooperation with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra and its conductor Jiří Bělohlávek for a performance of Bohuslav Martinů’s Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra. The group has made a recording of both quartets by Leoš Janáček for Czech Television in the unique space of Villa Tugendhat in Brno. The Czech Radio regularly records major concerts of the quartet.

The members of the quartet put a lot of stress on the inspiring and sometimes challenging choice of their concert repertoire. In 2012 and 2015, the ensemble performed in a sole evening the complete of Bartók’s six string quartets in Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and in Swedish Upsala. In 2014, the four presented a premiere of The Songs of Immigrants by Slavomír Hořínka in Konzerthaus Berlin. In 2019 the quartet added a new CD in its discography featuring the music of the persecuted Jewish composers H. Krása, V. Ullmann, E. Schulhoff and P. Haas on the Supraphon label.

In the 2023/2024 season, the Bennewitz Quartet will return to a number of European venues (Stuttgart, Mannheim, Heidelberg, Linz, Bilbao) and will make their debuts in Klagenfurt, Darmstadt and Duisburg. The quartet will again perform in the United States and Canada, and will continue its various concert projects in the Czech Republic, including a collaboration with the Dvořák Prague Festival. The ensemble is currently preparing the release of a new CD featuring string quartets by “those who used to play together” – Haydn, Mozart, Vaňhal and Dittersdorf. 

Since 1998 the quartet bears the name of the violinist and director of a music conservatory in Prague, Antonín Bennewitz (1833‒1926) who contributed greatly to the establishment of the Czech violin school. The most significant musicians who count among his disciples are Otakar Ševčík and František Ondříček and above all Karel Hoffman, Josef Suk and Oskar Nedbal who, under Bennewitz’s influence, formed the famous Bohemian Quartet.

Matouš Zukal (*1998) began playing piano at age seven. He has studied at the Grammar and Music School of the City of Prague under Jitka Němcová and at the Prague Conservatoire in the studio of Ivo Kahánek. At present he is continuing his studies under the same professor at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. This year he became a laureate of the Prague Spring International Music Competition, where he won second prize and other special awards—the Gideon Klein Foundation Prize and the Czech Centres Award. In 2019 he was the winner of the Bohuslav Martinů Foundation Competition, where he also won the prize for the best participant, the prize for the best interpretation of a composition by B. Martinů, and the Zorka and Jaroslav Zich Prize. In 2020 he appeared at the Dvořák Prague Festival, where he took part in a performance of the complete piano music of Antonín Dvořák in a piano marathon. Matouš is a member of the Academy of Chamber Music, with which he has taken part at events including the Styriarte Graz Festival. Since his childhood, he has been consulting at masterclasses with such important figures as Sir András Schiff, Lukáš Vondráček, Jiří Hlinka, and Leif Ove Andsnes. In 2021 Matouš was chosen as a scholarship recipient to study at the International Music Academy in Liechtenstein in the studio of Milana Chernyavska.