Ota Bartoš

He started playing the violin at the age of seven, first with his father and later at the Voršilská Music School in Prague with Jan Faust and Eduard Tureček. He completed the Prague Conservatory and the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague in Professor Nora Grumlíková’s class, while also studying chamber music with members of the Smetana Quartet. During his studies, he twice became the laureate of the international competition Beethoven’s Hradec (1978 and 1982). In 1982, he won the Czech Music Fund Award for the best interpretation of Bohuslav Martinů’s composition (the Czech Rhapsody). After graduation, he attended masterclass courses with world-renown virtuosi Nathan Milstein (Zürich) and Oleg Kagan (Weimar).

He has performed with chamber ensembles in the Czech Republic, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, South America and regularly plays in Japan. In January 2019, he was invited to play with the newly established European Union Orchestra in Bucharest. He was the Czech Philharmonic associate concertmaster between 2012 and 2014.

He comes from a family of musicians with tradition stretching to the beginning 19^th century. Among his ancestors are composer Václav Emanuel Horák (1800–1871) and pianist Roman Veselý (1879–1933), whose father Rudolf Veselý was a friend of Antonín Dvořák. He plays on Italian violin made by Felice Beretta in 1771.