Czech Philharmonic • New York

Daniil Trifonov

piano

Grammy Award-winning pianist Daniil Trifonov is a solo artist, champion of the concerto repertoire, chamber and vocal collaborator, and composer. Combining consummate technique with rare sensitivity and depth, his performances are a perpetual source of wonder to audiences and critics alike. He won the Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Solo Album of 2018 with Transcendental, the Liszt collection that marked his third title as an exclusive Deutsche Grammophon artist.

In 2024/2025, Trifonov undertakes season-long artistic residencies with both the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Czech Philharmonic. A highlight of his Chicago residency is Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto with incoming music director Klaus Mäkelä, and his Czech tenure features Dvořák’s Concerto with Semyon Bychkov at season-opening concerts in Prague, Toronto, and at New York’s Carnegie Hall. Trifonov also opens the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra’s season with Mozart’s 25th Piano Concerto under Andris Nelsons; performs Prokofiev’s Second with the San Francisco Symphony and Esa-Pekka Salonen; reprises Dvořák’s concerto for a European tour with Jakub Hrůša and the Bamberg Symphony; plays Ravel’s G-major Concerto with Hamburg’s NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra and Alan Gilbert; and joins Rafael Payare and the Montreal Symphony for concertos by Schumann and Beethoven on a major eight-city European tour. In recital, Trifonov appears twice more at Carnegie Hall as part of two U.S. tours, with a solo program and with violinist Leonidas Kavakos. Due for release in fall 2024, My American Story, the pianist’s new Deutsche Grammophon double album, pairs solo pieces with concertos by Gershwin and Mason Bates.

Trifonov’s existing Deutsche Grammophon discography includes the Grammy-nominated live recording of his Carnegie recital debut; Chopin Evocations; Silver Age, for which he received Opus Klassik’s Instrumentalist of the Year/Piano award; the best-selling, Grammy-nominated double album Bach: The Art of Life; and three volumes of Rachmaninov works with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin, of which two received Grammy nominations and the third won BBC Music’s 2019 Concerto Recording of the Year. Named Gramophone’s 2016 Artist of the Year and Musical America’s 2019 Artist of the Year, Trifonov was made a “Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres” by the French government in 2021.

During the 2010/2011 season, Trifonov won medals at three of the music world’s most prestigious competitions: Third Prize in Warsaw’s Chopin Competition, First Prize in Tel Aviv’s Rubinstein Competition, and both First Prize and Grand Prix in Moscow’s Tchaikovsky Competition. He studied with Sergei Babayan at the Cleveland Institute of Music.

Lucie Hilscherová

mezzo-soprano

The Czech mezzo-soprano Lucie Hilscherová makes guest appearances at the National Theatre in Prague, the National Moravian-Silesian Theatre in Ostrava, the J. K. Tyl Theatre in Pilsen, the Silesian Theatre in Opava, the State Theatre in Košice, and the Mannheim National Theatre. She has also appeared as Háta in The Bartered Bride in Tokyo (2010, Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, Suntory Hall, conductor Leoš Svárovský) and London (2011, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Barbican Hall, conductor Jiří Bělohlávek).

She is in demand for concert performances of the lieder and oratorio repertoire, and she also enjoys interpreting the works of contemporary composers. She has collaborated with important orchestras and conductors, appearing at such festivals as Musikfest Stuttgart, Beethovenfest Bonn, Grafenegg Musik-Sommer, Prague Spring, the Easter Festival of Sacred Music in Brno, Smetana’s Litomyšl, the St. Wenceslas Music Festival, and the Peter Dvorský International Music Festival in Jaroměřice.

Aleš Briscein

tenor

Two-time Thalia Award winner Aleš Briscein is a sought-after guest at Czech and foreign theatres and concert halls. He originally studied clarinet and saxophone, then opera singing at the Prague Conservatoire. Thereafter, he furthered his studies at the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen. He has performed at the prestigious Salzburg, Edinburgh, and Prague Spring festivals, including having sung the main tenor role of part Jonathan in the world premiere of the oratorio Judas Maccabeus by Sylvie Bodorová. For the Decca label, he make a CD recording of Pavel Haas’s opera The Charlatan, and he has sung in Alban Berg’s Wozzeck in Valencia and in Zemlinsky’s opera Der Zwerg with the Odyssey Opera in Boston. His range of repertoire is very broad, and he enjoys devoting himself to early music and sacred works. Although he has appeared in concert collaborating with many important orchestras, his career focuses on opera. He is a regular guest in Prague with the National Theatre and the State Opera, and abroad he works in close cooperation with the Opéra National de Paris. He has also appeared on the stages of the Teatro Real in Madrid, Vienna’s Volksoper, Berlin’s Komische Oper, the Bavarian State Opera, and Oper Graz.

David Leigh

bass

For the American bass David Leigh, today’s encounter with the Czech Philharmonic is not a debut either. He and the orchestra already collaborated in the 2023/24 season for a performance of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony on tour in Hamburg. However, the young singer’s chief domain is opera, to which he devotes himself at a world-class level despite his young age. As a member of the prestigious Lindemann Young Artist Development Program, he has appeared on stage regularly at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, and since then he has sung such important roles as Hagen (Der Ring des Nibelungen) in a production at the Zurich Opera House, King Mark (Tristan und Isolde) with the Santa Fe Opera, and Filippo (Don Carlos) with the Dallas Opera.

He benefitted from ideal conditions for musical development. He was born to an artistic family—his father is a respected composer, his mother is an acclaimed painter, and his sister is a noted playwright. Leigh studied composition at Yale University, then voice and opera at the Mannes College and the Yale School of Music, where he also earned the Harriet Gibbs Fox Memorial Prize for the best grades. He has also been awarded prizes by the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, the McCammon Competition held by the Fort Worth Opera, and the Wagner Society of New York.

Daniela Valtová Kosinová

organ

A graduate of Prague’s Academy of Performing Arts and of a year-long study visit at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hamburg, since 2006 Daniela Valtová Kosinová has been the solo organist and principal keyboard player of the Prague Symphony Orchestra. As a soloist, she collaborates with other Czech and foreign orchestras and appears regularly with the Czech Philharmonic, with which she has twice toured the USA. Her first performance with this orchestra of the Glagolitic Mass, to which she “found a path of her own”, took place at Vienna’s Musikverein under the baton of Jiří Bělohlávek, followed by several more performances including one on a floating stage on the Vltava and others on a tour of Europe in 2022. 

A winner of third prize and the title of laureate at the Brno International Organ Competition in 2002, she is often invited to such leading music festivals as Beethovenfest Bonn, Prague Spring, Smetana’s Litomyšl, and Janáček May. She is a cofounder of the concert programme Music Between the Words, and she also devotes herself to composing. In 2010 she released a jazz album of her own music titled Meeting Point, and she has appeared at numerous jazz festivals.

Prague Philharmonic Choir

The Prague Philharmonic Choir (PPC), founded in 1935 by the choirmaster Jan Kühn, is the oldest professional mixed choir in the Czech Republic. Their current choirmaster and artistic director is Lukáš Vasilek, and the second choirmaster is Lukáš Kozubík.

The choir has earned the highest acclaim in the oratorio and cantata repertoire, performing with the world’s most famous orchestras. In this country, they collaborate regularly with the Czech Philharmonic and the Prague Philharmonia. They also perform opera as the choir-in-residence of the opera festival in Bregenz, Austria.

Programmes focusing mainly on difficult, lesser-known works of the choral repertoire. For voice students, they are organising the Academy of Choral Singing, and for young children there is a cycle of educational concerts.

The choir has been honoured with the 2018 Classic Prague Award and the 2022 Antonín Dvořák Prize.

Lukáš Vasilek

choirmaster

Lukáš Vasilek studied conducting and musicology. Since 2007, he has been the chief choirmaster of the Prague Philharmonic Choir (PPC). Most of his artistic work with them involves rehearsing and performing a cappella repertoire and preparing them to perform in large-scale cantatas, oratorios, and operatic projects in collaboration with world-famous conductors and orchestras (Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Czech Philharmonic, Israel Philharmonic, Kyiv Symphony Orchestra, etc.).

In addition to leading the PPC, he is active in a wide range of artistic projects, most notably in collaboration with the vocal ensemble Martinů Voices, which he founded in 2010. As a conductor and choirmaster, he appears on numerous recordings for major international labels, including Decca Classics and Supraphon. In recent years, he has focused systematically on recording the choral music of Bohuslav Martinů. His recordings have received extraordinary worldwie acclaim and have earned awards from prestigious publications such as Gramophone, BBC Music Magazine, and Diapason.