Czech Chamber Music Society • Javier Arrey

Chilean born American baritone Javier Arrey, who is highly regarded for his refined voice, musicality and acting skills, is a frequent guest at the Vienna State Opera, the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the Palau de Les Arts in Valencia and other European and American opera houses and theatres. He has worked with a host of leading conductors, and his leading roles include Belcore (L’elisir d’amore), Count Almaviva (Le nozze di Figaro), Giovanni (Don Giovanni), Iago (Otello), Rodrigo (Don Carlos) and others. In addition to opera, Javier Arrey also performs in concert, and his repertoire includes art songs, such as Antonín Dvořák’s Biblical and Gypsy Songs.

He has also achieved several successes and received numerous awards – in 2011 he won the CulturArte prize at the Operalia competition in Moscow and was also a finalist in the prestigious BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition. In 2017, he was awarded a Medal of Honor at the National Congress of Chile for his artistic accomplishments and for an initiative aimed at making opera accessible to populations who have no access to live performances. He is also a graduate of the Washington National Opera’s Cafritz Young Artist Program.

Javier Arrey has also had the opportunity to perform twice before the Supreme Court of the United States at the invitation of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who praised his artistic qualities and his ability to attract new audiences to opera houses, particularly young people, who, in her words, are “needed to ensure that opera will remain a vital part of the contemporary musical scene.”

This is also evidenced by his “Feel the Opera Initiative”, which aims to bring the magic of opera to children in local schools and to new audiences in general. When one of the leaders of an Opera company at the States asked Javier Arrey how they can bring more kids and families to opera performances, the baritone replied: “Maybe the chocolate could be the answer. It’s one of the most exquisite, wonderful and great things we have – so what’s the best way to promote chocolate? Telling the people boring stuff like the chemical structure of the chocolate? No. We just bring the best chocolate we have, and we just tell them: ‘Try itʼ. And that’s exactly what we did with opera.” Rather than waiting for those audiences to come to the opera houses, the project brings a ‘taste’ of opera into their environment in didactic and interactive concert experience.

One of Javier Arrey’s other personal projects is called “Sharing Music, Sharing Love”, which has the mission to bring first class performances to people and places that usually have no access to classical music – thanks to the collaboration and support of various organisations and individuals, a series of concerts and recitals has been organised in hospitals, prisons, churches and shelters in the United States and beyond, and even online during the coronavirus pandemic. As the baritone himself says: “The labor of every artist achieves its greatest realization only when it is shared with someone else.”

Jan Dušek is a Czech pianist and composer who strives to connect tradition with the present in both his fields, thereby appealing to a wide range of performers and a broad audience. In addition to his concert and compositional activities, he teaches composition at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague.

As a pianist, he specialises in the interpretation of lesser-known works, especially from the 20th century. He made a unique recording of the complete piano works of Rudolf Karel for Czech Radio. He released an internationally acclaimed album of songs by Viktor Ullmann with Irena Troupová. In 2021, together with her and other performers, he also recorded the complete songs of the Czech German composer Hans Winterberg.

In addition to Javier Arrey, Jan Dušek also performs as a piano partner to prominent singers, such as Jana Sibera, Jana Hrochová and Roman Janál. Many composers have also entrusted him with the premiere performances of their works (Juraj Filas, Ivan Kurz, Zdeněk Bartošík, Daniel Chudovský and others). He has given concerts throughout Europe, Israel and Hong Kong, and has appeared repeatedly at music festivals, including the Prague Spring, Eternal Hope and the Festival of Young Artists Bayreuth.

World-renowned personalities have shaped his piano interpretation – he studied under the Austrian pianist Robert Lehrbaumer, the Chinese pianist Xiao-Mei Zhu and the English pianist Gordon Fergus-Thompson, and also attended numerous masterclasses with, amongst others, the pianists Cyprien Katsaris, Angela Hewitt and Lilit Grygorian.

As a composer, he first came to prominence whilst studying at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, winning several composition competitions on multiple occasions. One of his most significant works is the cycle Chalomot yehudi’im (Jewish Dreams), which won the Gideon Klein Prize and the Audience Prize at the NuBERG competition; this composition was even selected for a concert broadcast live by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), reaching several thousand listeners around the world. Another frequently performed piece is the compulsory composition for the Prague Spring Competition for solo clarinet, Unsent Letter. Performers of this and his other works include leading figures from the Czech and international music scenes. His work is characterised by its emotional impact; in his compositions, he works with both tonality and 20th-century musical elements and techniques.

Jan Dušek’s most recent compositional and interpretative works include, amongst others, Three Sorrowful Songs for soprano, tenor and piano after poems by Oldřich Böhm, which he composed for the international Ullmann Festival. He has collaborated with this festival in the past as well – his piano piece Waiting for Dawn – Hommage à Viktor Ullmann received its world premiere at the festival’s third edition in 2022. This autumn, in addition to the Rudolfinum in Prague, we can hear Jan Dušek perform at Dobrohoř Castle in a programme comprising works by Viktor Kalabis, Leoš Janáček and Bohuslav Martinů; his own work will also be featured at the Plzeňský podzim festival, amongst other events.