Czech Chamber Music Society • Václav Petr

Ludwig van Beethoven modeled the structure of his two Sonatas for Cello and Piano, Op. 102 after Mozart, but filled it with music that – like most works of his late period – caused embarrassment among his contemporaries. The impulse for both sonatas came from Beethoven’s acquaintance with the cellist Joseph Linke, who as a member of the Schuppanzigh Quartet later also participated in the premieres of Beethoven’s late string quartets. The sonatas were composed in 1815 and Linke first performed them together with Beethoven’s pupil Carl Czerny. In the Sonata in D major, which is Beethoven’s last ever cello sonata, the composer employed the contrapuntal technique that he had increasingly explored in his last creative phase. The sonata opens with a sixteenth-note figure in the piano, a kind of motto that in combination with the other material goes through the whole movement. A strong contrast is brought about by the slow movement, which in its expression comes close to the epoch of Romanticism in music. The cello and the piano instruments are in dialogue with each other; the movement alternates between major and minor keys; the main and surprising climax of the movement comes its coda. The final movement serves as an example of Beethoven’s humor. The composer deliberately begins in a rather banal way only to come up with a fugal theme and inventive rhythmic transformations of an almost improvisatory nature.

In 1900, two of Josef Suk’s compositions for cello and piano, Ballade and Serenade, were published in Berlin under one opus number. The Ballade, Op. 3, No. 1 was an incidental piece composed for a concert by Karel Stecker’s pupils at the Prague Conservatory and was premiered by Otto Berger, to whom it is dedicated, and Josef Suk on 15 January 1891. Five years later Suk revised the piece. The Serenade, Op. 3, No. 2 was first presented on 28 April 1898 at the Konvikt hall in Prague by the cellist Rudolf Pavlata and the composer himself. After two more performances with different performers, on 27 November of the same year the two works were performed together in the Rudolfinum at the “Concert of the Young Music Generation” by the cellist Jan Burian and the pianist Bedřich Křídlo. Both compositions have been preserved in the estate of the cellist Bedřich Váška, the dedicatee of the Serenade, in copies made by the composer’s father, Josef Suk the Eldest (1827–1913), a teacher in the village of Křečovice.

On 22 January 1934, Dmitri Shostakovich’s opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District was presented for the first time in Leningrad. Two days later, the Moscow premiere took place at the Nemirovich Danchenko Theater, and it immediately attracted interest abroad. The opera was played for two years, also at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. In January 1935, its performance was attended by Joseph Stalin. As a result, Shostakovich got into the first conflict with the aesthetic line dictated by the state. The Pravda newspaper published an article entitled Muddle Instead of Music concerning his opera, whose headline Shostakovich reportedly noticed while being on a concert tour with the cellist Viktor Kubatsky. One of the pieces on their program was Sonata for Cello and Piano in D minor, Op. 40, dedicated to Kubatsky, which they premiered together on 25 December 1935 in the Leningrad Philharmonic’s Small Hall. Shostakovich wrote the sonata in the summer of 1934, the busy and hopeful period after the opera’s premiere when the world was learning about the young Russian composer. While retaining the traditional Classical-Romantic formal scheme, the sonata already bears the hallmarks of Shostakovich’s style, characterized by parodic elements and a tendency towards the grotesque. The first movement is reminiscent of the music of Romantic bourgeois salons. The composer assigns an extensive cantilena to cello accompanied by piano chords; in the development, the composer’s above-mentioned ability to lighten up can be felt. In the mirror recapitulation – i.e., with the reverse sequence of the two themes – the main theme is distorted and the end of the movement is melancholic, like a memory of times gone by. Allegro forms a contrast, a humorous exaggeration, sounding deliberately almost trivial at times. The somber, elegiac slow movement brings about another sharp contrast, giving the impression of resignation, but irony flashes through. The final movement, which according to the established canon of forms should represent a resolution of the conflicts raised in the previous movements, toys with these ideas, for example, by several mechanical repetitions of the motif in the very end.

He has been concertmaster of the Czech Philharmonic for more than a decade, has been performing as a soloist since the age of twelve, and also devotes himself to chamber music as a member of The Trio: the young cellist Václav Petr has established himself as one of the most successful artists of his generation.

He learned the basics of cello playing from Mirek Škampa at the Jan Neruda School in Prague, studied under Daniel Veis at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, and then graduated under Michal Kaňka. He further perfected his playing under the guidance of Wolfgang Boettcher at the Universität der Künste in Berlin and participated in a number of international masterclasses in Kronberg, Hamburg, Vaduz, Bonn, and Baden-Baden. He has also achieved a remarkable number of competition successes since childhood (Prague Junior Note, International Cello Competition in Liezen, Austria, Talents of Europe, Concertino Praga) and gradually worked his way up to the most prestigious European competitions (semi-finalist in the Grand Prix Emanuel Feuermann competition, winner of the Prague Spring competition).

At the age of 24, he won an audition for the Czech Philharmonic, becoming one of the youngest concertmasters in the orchestra’s history. He has also performed several times as a soloist with the Czech Philharmonic, including in 2024 at the Dvořák Prague Festival, where he played the world premiere of Petr Wajsar’s Concerto for cello under the baton of Ingo Metzmacher. He has also performed as a soloist with the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Prague Philharmonia, the Janáček Philharmonic Orchestra Ostrava, and the Baden-Baden Philharmonie.

Václav Petr has also enjoyed great success as a chamber musician. Between 2009 and 2020, he was a member of the Josef Suk Piano Quartet, with which he won first prizes in the chamber ensemble competition in Val Tidone, Italy, the Salieri-Zinetti chamber ensemble competition, and one of the most prestigious competitions for chamber ensembles with piano, the Premio Trio di Trieste. In 2019, together with Jiří Vodička, concertmaster of the Czech Philharmonic, and pianist Martin Kasík, he founded the Czech Philharmonic Piano Trio, later renamed The Trio. In 2020, they recorded Bohuslav Martinů’s Bergerettes in period costumes and won an international competition in Vienna.

In the winter of 2026, Václav Petr performed Beethoven’s Triple Concerto for Violin, Cello, and Piano together with violinist Jan Fišer and pianist Karolina Pancernaite, accompanied by the Czech Philharmonic conducted by Giovanni Antonini. Critics praised his “brightness, wonderful articulation, and silvery tone.”

Václav Petr plays a master instrument from the workshop of Giovanni Battista Guadagnini, a Teschenmacher model from 1757, on loan from a private collection.

The young Czech pianist Marek Kozák has been lauded for his impeccable technique, sense of proportion and gradation, plethora of registers, immense musicality and profound respect for the score. A highly cultivated performer, he enchants listeners with his ability to “convey with humility and without ostentatious gesture that which the composer aimed to express” (M. Bátor, Czech Radio, Vltava).

A graduate of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, where he studied under Ivan Klánský, he has received many international awards. In June 2021, he became a laureate of the prestigious Concours Géza Anda in Zürich. Moreover, he advanced to the final of the Ferruccio Busoni Competition in Bolzano and the semi-final of the Fryderyk Chopin Competition in Warsaw, and won the European Piano Competition in Bremen, where he also earned the audience prize. He received second prize at the 2016 Prague Spring Competition for his performance of Adam Skoumal’s The Juggler. 
A pianist enjoying international renown, Marek Kozák has been invited to give recitals in Switzerland, Germany, Spain and other countries. Yet he has most frequently performed in the Czech Republic, appearing at such major events as the Leoš Janáček International Music Festival in Ostrava, Smetana’s Litomyšl, Dvořák Prague, Saint Wenceslas Music Festival and the Rudolf Firkušný International Piano Festival. He has performed with leading Czech orchestras as a soloist and within their recital cycles (in February 2023, he debuted as a guest of the Prague Symphony Orchestra at the Rudolfinum). 

Besides the piano repertoire staples, primarily Fryderyk Chopin and J. S. Bach works (he performed both sets of The Well-Tempered Clavier at two successive editions of Smetana’s Litomyšl, for instance), he has also undertaken little-known piano concertos by Karel Kovařovic, Vítězslava Kaprálová and Pavel Bořkovec, which he has recorded with the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Robert Jindra. His most recent album, Zapomenuté klavírní koncerty (Forgotten Piano Concertos), released in March 2024, has extended his discography, following his profile CD featuring pieces by Joseph Haydn, Fryderyk Chopin, César Franck, Sergei Rachmaninov and Adam Skoumal.

In addition to appearing as a soloist, Marek Kozák performs chamber music, most often along with the soprano Simona Šaturová and – as today – the cellist Václav Petr. Within the current Year of Czech Music, he and the German tenor Thoma Jaron-Wutz have prepared a recital focusing on Bedřich Smetana’s life. Mark Kozák also works as an educator, teaching at the City of Prague Music School.