This year's edition of Dvořák's international radio competition for young musicians, Concertino Praga, culminated in a finale on Saturday, September 14th at Prague's Rudolfinum. Both the jury and the audience agreed: the trio of pianists was surpassed by Polish violinist Zoja Syguda. Czech pianist Nora Lubbadová placed right behind her.
Four young female musicians advanced to the finals from the first round, in which the judges evaluated anonymous recordings of 36 musicians from 15 countries. Until the last performance, it seemed that the victory would belong to the Czech pianist who performed E. Grieg's Piano Concerto, but it was the admirably mature interpretation of P. I. Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto by the Polish violinist at the very end of the evening that determined the final ranking.
The results were announced immediately after the final concert by an international jury consisting of Tomáš Jamník, Ivo Kahánek, Paul Lewis, Maria Meerovitch, František Novotný, Stana Salgo, Irvin Venyš, Henrik Wahlgren, Henrik Wiese, and Sarah Willis, who was the chair of the jury.
The concert was broadcast live by Czech Radio Vltava and the prestige of the competition is also evidenced by the fact that it was streamed online throughout Asia via the Chinese audiovisual platform for classical music, Amadeus.tv. The evening's success was further enhanced by the reliable performance of the Czech Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Marek Prášil, who provided the necessary support to the performers.
The winner of the competition received a financial scholarship from the Karel Komárek Family Foundation amounting to 5,000 euros and the Czech Radio Prize, which includes the recording of a CD with professional technical parameters in the Czech Radio studios. The runners-up received scholarships of 2,800 euros from the Karel Komárek Family Foundation, 1,700 euros from Bulb company, and 700 euros from Bärenreiter publishing house.
In addition to the four finalists, the jury from the first round also selected three contestants for performances on the Talent Stage at the International Music Festival Dvořákova Praha 2024, which took place on September 12 at Artium in Bořislavka. These were clarinetist Matthew Stephen Hockaday (Czech Republic), cellist Darin Lambrev (Bulgaria), and accordionist Viktor Stocker (Czech Republic).
Before the final round, the recipients of the competition's special awards were announced.
Nora Lubbadová received the Karel Komárek Family Foundation Award for the most successful Czech participant in the competition.
Matthew Stephen Hockaday won the Bohuslav Martinů Foundation Award.
Darin Lambrev and Zoja Syguda received the Viktor Kalabis and Zuzana Růžičková Foundation Award.
The Academy of Classical Music and the Karel Komárek Family Foundation have reached an agreement with Czech Radio to expand the ACM and KKFF prizes for the winners and finalists of the 58th Concertino Praga – Antonín Dvořák International Radio Competition for Young Musicians.
In addition to the existing prizes, i.e. the KKFF scholarship valued at 5000 EUR and the Czech Radio Prize in the form of a professional studio recording, the winner of the 1st prize will also receive:
The winners of the 2nd and 3rd place prizes and any level 1 honorary mentions will also receive a professional audiovisual recording of their final performance at the Dvořák Prague music festival created by the ACM in association with Czech Radio and presented on a DVD or another electronic medium for the purposes of the personal presentation of the laureate (the conditions of use will be stated in the Prize Contract) in addition to the existing prizes and associated purpose-based scholarships.
Czech Radio and the Academy of Classical Music will continue to search for options for the further musical education and concert opportunities for all the finalists in the Concertino Praga 2024, as has been declared in the valid competition conditions for the 58th year of the competition.
Introducing the jury of Concertino Praga 2024
The jury for the 2nd round:
More information about the jurors can be found on the Concertino Praga website.
Concertino Praga – the Antonín Dvořák International Radio Competition for Young Musicians – has been held each year since 1966. The mission of this multidisciplinary competition is to find extraordinary talents up to age 15 or 16. It is jointly organised by the Academy of Classical Music and Czech Radio. Candidates in two categories – solo and chamber music – are judged by an international jury of experts. In the first round, the jury evaluates the candidates anonymously on the basis of submitted recordings. The finals are held in public as a concert of the Dvořák Prague International Music Festival. In 2021, the competition is open to contestants in both categories. The solo category will be held for violin, cello, piano, harpsichord, harp, accordion, guitar, flute, oboe, clarinet, saxophone, bassoon, French horn, trumpet, and trombone. The chamber music category is open to ensembles ranging from duos to sextets.
The winners will receive a scholarship in the amount of up to EUR 5,000. Laureates will also have the opportunity to make a professional radio recording at Czech Radio and to appear at the South Bohemia Festival Concertino Praga.
Since 1988, Concertino Praga has been a member of the European Union of Music Competitions for Youth (EMCY). It is held under the auspices of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), of which Czech Radio became an active member in 1993.
Concertino Praga – the Antonín Dvořák International Radio Competition for Young Musicians – was founded in 1966 at the initiative of the Czechoslovak Radio editorial staff for broadcasting for children and young people. Among the leading figures in the initial development of the idea of a radio competition were the harpsichordist Zuzana Růžičková, the composer Viktor Kalabis, and the radio editor Helena Karásková. Thanks to the existence of the Organisation Internationale de la Radiodiffusion et Télévision, a former east-European institution that facilitated cooperation between radio and television stations, the competition was able to attain an international character and thus to differentiate itself from a large number of established national competitions for performing musicians.
In view of the complications associated with organising international activities under the former political regime, the decision was made to hold a competition without the direct participation of the competitors by only using submitted audio recordings. It was not until the concert that the winners were invited to appear together on one stage for the first time in history in the Dvořák Hall at the House of Artists in Prague on 18 November 1966, where the violinists Václav Hudeček (2nd prize) and Dmitry Sitkovetsky (1st prize) were among the now familiar artists presenting themselves.
The following year, Václav Hudeček won first prize, and among the pianists to win prizes were Dina Joffe and Zoltán Kocsis. Despite the competition’s necessarily strong orientation towards eastern Europe, among the laureates at the turn of the 1960s and ’70s were the Israeli violinist Yuval Yaron, a string quartet from West Germany (with Ulrike Fleming, Assunta Kwoka, Brigitte Schmeid, and Doris Laidler), a Japanese piano duo with Shizuka Ishikawa and Mariko Horie, and the Canadian pianists Louis Lortie and Jon Kimura Parker. Still today, there is an apparent tradition of candidates from eastern Europe – each year, Russian competitors usually represent the most numerous foreign nationality at Concertino.
While the competition was initially open to just three categories (piano, violin, and chamber music), the number of instruments gradually grew. For this reason, among the laureates were not only the violinists Sergei Stadler, Julian Rachlin, Isabelle Faust, and Jan Mráček and the pianists Vladimír Felcman, Igor Ardašev, and Ivo Kahánek, but also the cellists Leonid Gorochov, Alexander Rudin, and Tomáš Jamník, the organist Jaroslav Tůma, the flautist Michael Martin Kofler, the oboists Jana Brožková and Vilém Veverka, the clarinettists Sabine Meyer and Ludmila Peterková, the French horn player Radek Baborák, and the trumpet player Giuliano Sommerhalder.
The multidisciplinary and international character of Concertino Praga has been strengthened thanks to the establishment of cooperation between Czech Radio and the Academy of Classical Music in 2019. This has brought together the potential of the large media company that founded the competition and has been leading it successfully for more than 50 years, and of an institution that has been presenting the internationally recognised Dvořák Prague Festival for twelve years. The support for exceptionally talented young artists was thus able to take on a new form, and the 54th annual Concertino Praga competition gained the subtitle Antonín Dvořák International Radio Competition for Young Musicians. Dvořák’s legacy is reflected in the fact that the composer himself gave financial support to promising young artists. Successful contestants therefore receive scholarships or a contribution towards the purchase of their own instrument thanks to major support from the Karel Komárek Family Foundation and other partners.
Click HERE to download the Application for the Scholarship Drawdown.
