Czech Chamber Music Society • Pavel Haas Quartet

The Pavel Haas Quartet was founded in 2002 by the violinist Veronika Jarůšková and the violist Pavel Nikl, who was a member of the ensemble until 2016, when he left due to family reasons. Yet their collaboration has continued – Pavel Nikl has been the ensemble’s permanent guest for string quintet performances. Between 2004 and 2012, the second violin was played by Kateřina Gemrotová Penková, Marie Fuxová and Eva Karová Krestová. In 2016 and 2017, the viola was played by Radim Sedmidubský.

Following their victory in the Prague Spring Festival Competition and Premio Paolo Borciani in Reggio Emilia, Italy in 2005, the Pavel Haas Quartet soon established themselves as one of the world’s most exciting contemporary chamber ensembles. Performing at the most renowned concert venues around the globe, the PHQ have to date recorded six critically acclaimed CDs, which have received numerous prestigious awards. The ensemble members studied with Milan Škampa, the legendary violist of the Smetana Quartet.

In the 2019/20 season the Quartet will return to major venues including Tonhalle Zürich, Wigmore Hall London, Philharmonie Luxembourg, Stockholm Konserthuset, Società del Quartetto di Milano and festivals such as the Schubertiade. They will return to Amsterdam Muziekgebouw to perform three concerts at the String Quartet Biennale in January 2020 and will embark on their first tour to Israel with performances in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa. Further tours will be to the US and Canada as well as to Asia, where they will return to NCPA Beijing and give their debuts in Hong Kong and Singapore.

In 2007, the European Concert Hall Organisation (ECHO) named the Pavel Haas Quartet one of its Rising Stars, following which they were afforded the opportunity to give numerous high-profile concert appearances all over the world. Between 2007 and 2009, the Pavel Haas Quartet held the title of BBC New Generation Artist. In 2010, the ensemble was granted a classical music fellowship from the Borletti–Buitoni Trust.

The Pavel Haas Quartet have exclusively recorded for Supraphon. Their very first album (2006), featuring Leoš Janáček’s String Quartet No. 2, “Intimate Letters”, and Pavel Haas’s String Quartet No. 2, “From the Monkey Mountains”, earned the ensemble their first Gramophone Award. The Daily Telegraph named it CD of the Year. The second album, completing the mapping of Leoš Janáček’s and Pavel Haas’s quartet works, garnered enormous acclaim too. Gramophone wrote about it: “To describe a CD as musically important is to court a certain level of controversy ... but I'll stick my neck out and claim extreme importance for this release.” Their third album, featuring both Sergey Prokofiev quartets and the Sonata for Two Violins, won France’s Diapason d’Or de l’Année 2010. The fourth album, featuring Antonín Dvořák’s quartets in F major, the “American”, Op. 96, and in G major, Op. 106, received the 2011 Gramophone Award in the Chamber category, as well as the most coveted prize of all – Recording of the Year. The Sunday Times gave the album the highest possible rating: “Their account of the American Quartet belongs alongside the greatest performances on disc. In this repertoire, they are simply matchless today.” In 2014, the Pavel Haas Quartet received yet another Gramophone Award, for the album of Schubert’s String Quartet in D minor, “Death and the Maiden”, and String Quintet, recorded with the German cellist Danjulo Ishizaka. Their following album, featuring Smetana’s String Quartets Nos 1 and 2 (2015), earned the ensemble their fifth Gramophone Award and second BBC Music Magazine Award. Gramophone emphasised that: “Their sound is, as ever, immediately recognisable – partly due to the sheer richness of timbre but also the sense of four personalities at play… At times it is hard to believe you are in the presence of only four players, so intense is the sound”. For their latest disc of Dvořák’s Piano Quintet No. 2 and String Quintet No. 3 (2017) with Boris Giltburg and their former member Pavel Nikl they were awarded their sixth Gramophone Award. Gramophone wrote about that: “Another Pavel Haas Quartet disc, another triumph. They seem always immersed in all they play, both in terms of their rapport but their instinctive understanding of the score too.” Their next recording of Shostakovich’s String Quartets Nos. 2, 7 and 8 will be released in October 2019.

The quartet bears the name of the Czech composer Pavel Haas (1899–1944), the most talented pupil of Leoš Janáček, who in 1941 was imprisoned by the Nazis in the Terezín ghetto and three years later died in Auschwitz. Pavel Haas’s oeuvre includes three splendid string quartets.

Pavel Haas Quartet: Veronika Jarůšková (1^st violin), Marek Zwiebel (2^nd violin), Jiří Kabát (viola), Peter Jarůšek (violoncello)

Pavel Nikl studied viola under Zdeněk Novák at the P. J. Vejvanovský Conservatoire in Kroměříž and then at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague under Jan Pěruška and Milan Škampa. As a student, he took part in several masterclasses (Semmering – prize for the best performances of works by B. Bartók and B. Martinů) and won top prizes at international competitions (Czech Conservatoires Competition, Beethoven’s Hradec, J. Brahms International Competition in Pörtschach).

He has appeared as a soloist with the Prague Philharmonia, the Bohuslav Martinů Philharmonic in Zlín, the Moravian Philharmonic in Olomouc, the North Bohemia Philharmonic in Teplice, the South Bohemia Philharmonic in České Budějovice, and other orchestras. In 2002 the focal point of his activity shifted to chamber music. He was one of the founding members of the Pavel Haas Quartet, which has won great international acclaim over the years for its concerts and recordings.

Pavel Nikl also teaches, and within the framework of the quartet’s activities, he has led masterclasses at universities in Europe, the USA, and Australia. Since 2016, after stepping down as violist of the Pavel Haas Quartet, he has been a professor of viola and chamber music at the P. J. Vejvanovský Conservatoire in Kroměříž. However, he continues to work in very close collaboration with the quartet. Besides the recordings of Dvořák’s quintets, which won a 2018 Gramophone Award, he appears with the quartet regularly in concert. As an experienced chamber player, he gets invitations to collaborate with other top musicians (Gil Shaham, Gerhard Oppitz, Kian Soltani, Josef Špaček, Michaela Fukačová, Fedor Rudin et al.). He also sits on Czech and international competition juries.

After his studies at the conservatoire, during which he became a member of the Brno Philharmonic, the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra, and the European Union Youth Orchestra (working with the conductor Claudio Abbado), he continued his studies at the Janáček Academy of Performing Arts, where he is now a professor of tuned percussion and is the head of the percussion department). He also teaches chamber music performing. He was one of the founding members of the DAMA DAMA Central European Percussion Ensemble, and with them he won an international competition of percussion orchestras in the Netherlands.

His musical priority is playing the marimba (his CD Reverberations features solo works and chamber music for marimba) and other tuned percussion instruments. At his concerts, he systematically presents compositions written for him, giving their Czech or world premieres. He also teaches masterclasses on the interpretation of contemporary music for marimba, and he is invited to sit on juries for music competitions in this country and abroad.

He is a sought-after chamber musician. He has performed with the BERG Orchestra in Prague, the Ensemble Opera Diversa in Brno, and the Ostrava Centre for New Music. He cofounded the OK Percussion Duo, which creates and interprets contemporary percussion music. He devotes himself to improvisation projects in the ensemble Dust in the Groove. He also took part in two CDs with Iva Bittová, and with the jazz legend Joe Zawinul he created the album Stories of the Danube.

Martin Opršál has performed as a soloist and in ensembles in concerts and at music festivals in the countries of central and western Europe, Japan, Korea, and the USA. He has made solo appearances with the Prague Philharmonia and the philharmonic orchestras in Ostrava, Brno, Hradec Králové, Zlín, Olomouc, and Karlovy Vary.