Czech Chamber Music Society • Ženatý, Kasík

Music critics, fellow musicians and audiences call Ivan Ženatý “the most important Czech violinist of this time.”

Mr. Ženatý reaches a broad public without abandoning the world of classical music for even a moment. Besides the technical perfection one would expect, he is also appreciated for his taste, style and captivatingly beautiful tone. With his exceptional wealth of repertoire including more than 50 violin concertos, he is a favoured guest artist with many international orchestras. Known for his versatility, his engagements also include solo recitals and chamber music collaborations.

His international career developed as a result of winning a prize in the Tchaikovsky International Violin Competition followed immediately by debut engagements with the Moscow and Czech Philharmonic Orchestras. Other successes include first prize at the Prague Spring Competition, as well as being a chosen laureate of the UNESCO International Rostrum of Young Performers. In the subsequent years Ivan Ženatý made his orchestral and solo debuts in London, Berlin, Amsterdam, Vienna, Zurich, Tokyo, New York, Buenos Aires, Madrid and Jerusalem.

The musicianship of Ivan Ženatý has been influenced the most by his personal encounters with Nathan Milstein, Ruggiero Ricci and André Gertler. Studies at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow under the tutelage of Igor Bezrodny had the greatest impact on his technical approach to the violin. The great Czech musical tradition was passed on to Ivan Ženatý through his mentor Josef Suk, which resulted in many years of professional partnership and culminated in a recording of the complete works of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Other great musicians, with which Ivan Ženatý collaborated, include Yehudi Menuhin, Yo-Yo Ma, Serge Baudo, Valery Gergiev and Neville Marriner.

Ivan Ženatý’s recordings have always been enthusiastically received by listeners and music critics. His prolific output of over 40 CDs includes the complete works of Telemann, Bach, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Schulhoff, Dvořák and Grieg. His new recording of the complete works of Dvořák has attracted extraordinary attention, as has his recording of both violin concertos by Josef Bohuslav Foerster with the BBC Symphony Orchestra London and its music director Jiří Bělohlávek.

A natural counterbalance to Ivan Ženatý’s concert and recording activities is his work as an acclaimed teacher. Mr. Ženatý has taught at the Hochschule für Musik in Dresden and in the fall of 2012 he was invited to join the faculty of the Cleveland Institute of Music. His summer activities will include teaching at the Meadowmount School of Music.

Thanks to the Harmony Foundation of New York, Ivan Ženatý plays a rare Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesu violin made in 1740.

Martin Kasík is widely acclaimed for his inventive, poetic approach to performing, through which he captures the mood of the moment. He studied at the Janáček Conservatoire in Ostrava under M. Tugendliebová, the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague under I. Klánský and participated in masterclasses under L. Berman, G. Ohlsson, and P. Badura-Skoda.

His path to stages around the world (Carnegie Hall, Wiener Musikverein,Gewandhaus Leipzig, Suntory Hall Tokyo etc.) was opened by victory at the 1998 Prague Spring Competition and at the 1999 Young Concert Artists Competition in New York. Since then, he has been collaborating with the most important ensembles including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, Rotterdam Philharmonic, or Czech Philharmonic. His recordings on the Supraphon and Arco Diva labels have won top honours in the journals Gramophone, Repertoire, and Harmonie.

He also teaches at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague and at the Prague Conservatoire, and he is the artistic director of the Chopin Festival in Mariánské Lázně.

Richard Strauss, a leading representative of late German Romanticism, composed his first composition at the age of four. From the age of 6 he attended rehearsals with the Munich Court Orchestra, in which his father Franz played the first horn. From the age of 8 he learned to play the violin, and at 12 he began studying composition. He studied at the Ludwigsgymnasium and the University of Munich, but dropped out and went to Berlin, where he devoted himself fully to music. At the age of 19 he wrote Horn Concerto No. 1 for his father, which became the repertoire staple of this instrument.

At the age of 21 Strauss began his conducting career as assistant to Hans von Bülow at the Meiningen Court Orchestra, but he soon became primary conductor and was able to work with Brahms, among others. He worked in Meiningen until 1886, when he went on a study trip to Italy (reflected in his symphonic suite Aus Italien, Op. 16). Upon his return he joined the Bavarian Court Opera in Munich. However, he was not very happy in his new position. As a third conductor he conducted mostly second-rate operas and ballets, which he did not enjoy, and then he was required to step in to conduct performance for operas which he had never rehearsed. However, it was during this time that he met the love of his life, the soprano Pauline de Ahna, with whom he fell in love. She was a voice student at the Munich Musikschule and became his private pupil. They got married later, in 1894. Strauss’s amorous feelings and passion can be heard in the violin sonata that the then 24-year-old composer wrote at this time.

The premiere of Violin Sonata in E flat major took place on 3 October 1888 in Munich with Robert Heckmann at the violin and Julius Buths at the piano. The nearly 30-minute sonata is in three movements and follows standard sonata form. The piano part in this piece is featured in a Schumann-like manner. The first movement passes from a rather melancholic opening to an emphatic ending; the second movement is unique in that the violin part is presented as an improvisation. The final movement is introduced by the piano in an andante, followed by a virtuosic allegro with an explosive, thrilling ending. Strauss’s Violin Sonata was completed just before Don Juan, a brilliant symphonic poem, a true whirlwind of passion and emotion, Strauss’s first real triumph (1888). In a few short years he became a world-renowned composer of opera and symphonic music.