Summer Concerts • Josef Špaček and Miroslav Sekera

“Working with Josef Špaček is amazing. He is a wonderful person with good heart. You can feel this in his playing, which is gracious, teeming with emotion. And his technique is marvellous. He is one of the greatest solo violinists of the present time,” says the conductor Manfred Honeck, under whom the young virtuoso has regularly given concerts, in the Czech Television documentary Devět sezón (Nine Seasons) The 2023 film provides an interesting account of Špaček’s life, also shedding light on his nine-year tenure as the Czech Philharmonic’s concert master.  

Although not having been a member for four years, Josef Špaček has not ceased to collaborate with the Czech Philharmonic, pursuing numerous joint projects. And even though appearing as a soloist with celebrated orchestras worldwide and as a chamber player at the most prestigious concert venues, he continues to perform in Czech towns and remote villages. 

Josef Špaček is a member of the exciting international Trio Zimbalist, giving performances all over the globe. He has regularly appeared in the Czech Republic with the cellist Tomáš Jamník and the pianist Miroslav Sekera, with whom he has created critically acclaimed albums. He has also made recordings with the Czech Philharmonic (featuring Janáček’s and Dvořák’s violin concertos, and Suk’s Fantasy), the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Petr Popelka (Bohuslav Martinů’s music).

Born in 1986 in Třebíč, Bohemia, Josef Špaček showed his exceptional talent at an early age. Music was a natural part of his childhood (his father has been a cellist of the Czech Philharmonic for over three decades, and his siblings played instruments too), as described by his mother in the book Špačci ve fraku. After graduating from the Prague Conservatory 
(under the tutelage of Jaroslav Foltýn), Josef went on to study in the USA, where he attended the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia (his teachers included Ida Kavafian and Jaime Laredo) and The Julliard School in New York (tutored by Itzak Perlman). 

After completing his formal education, he returned to his homeland, where he was named the youngest ever concert master of the Czech Philharmonic. At the same time, he performed as a soloist and chamber player, garnering international recognition. A watershed in his career was victory at the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels, whereupon he began receiving invitations from the world’s most renowned institutions. Due to his having an ever more challenging and busy schedule as a musician – and to his family situation, especially following the birth of three children – he resigned from the post of concert master of the Czech Philharmonic so as to focus solely on being a soloist. Owing to his immense talent and great diligence, his childhood dream to become a famous violinist has come to pass.  

Miroslav Sekera, winner of the 2002 Johannes Brahms International Competition in Portschach, Austria, had already won prizes at many important competitions in this country and abroad (F. Chopin International Competition in Mariánské Lázně, YAMAHA Scholarship Competition, International Piano Competition in Gaillard, France). In 2016 he won a prize from the “Salon de Virtuosi” music society in New York.

He has two solo CDs to his credit, which have won awards on the website Pizzicato.lu; for Joseph Summer, a contemporary composer from Boston, he has recorded seven more CDs in the USA. He collaborates with Czech Radio and with leading Czech orchestras and festivals, including a solo recital at the Rudolf Firkušný Piano Festival at the Rudolfinum. He makes guest appearances abroad, especially in Japan and the USA. 

He performs regularly with violinist Josef Špaček, mezzo-soprano Dagmar Pecková, and French horn player Radek Baborák.

He began playing piano at age three and graduated from the Prague Conservatoire (Eva Boguniová and Martin Ballý) and the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (Miroslav Langer).