Kateřina Javůrková

Biography

“My work brings new people into my life, lets me discover new places, and often provides me with unforgettable experiences.”

A leading Czech horn player, the laureate of the 2019 Jiří Bělohlávek Prize, and a member of the acclaimed Belfiato Quintet, Kateřina Javůrková began playing the French horn at age nine under Tomáš Krejbich at the Na Popelce Elementary School of the Arts. She had already been playing the recorder since she was three years old. “Dad introduced us to music when we were little, and we got our start under Professor Václav Žilka in his famous project Merry Whistling – Healthy Breathing. Once we were older, my father more or less pushed the horn on me because it was his dream that someone would play it, and my brother had already chosen the clarinet. I hated the French horn until I was 15”, she recalls.

In the end, she reevaluated her childhood opinion of the horn and graduated from the studio of Professor Bedřich Tylšar at the Prague Conservatoire and from the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, where her teachers were Zdeněk Divoký and Radek Baborák. Her development as a musician was advanced significantly by a half-year study visit to Paris’s Conservatoire Nationale Supérieur de Musique et Danse in the studio of Professor André Cazalet. She has won many awards at competitions including first prize at the 2013 Prague Spring International Competition and second prize at the ARD International Competition in Munich in 2016.

From age 17, Javůrková played in the Prague Philharmonia, and she has now been in the Czech Philharmonic horn section for over ten years. “I’m glad my work is also my biggest hobby. My work brings new people into my life, lets me discover new places, and often provides me with unforgettable experiences. Besides purely musical ones, there were times like the concert when my colleague Karel Kučer’s tailcoat caught on fire, the concert with Misha Maisky that I missed in the dressing room, the concert at Carnegie Hall when I couldn’t find my horn three minutes before the start, or the time the Empress of Japan accompanied me at the piano”, the horn player recalls.

She has made solo appearances with the Czech Philharmonic as well as with the Prague Philharmonia, the Munich Chamber Orchestra, and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. She premiered Krzysztof Penderecki’s Horn Concerto with the National Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra in Katowice and then in Prague. She collaborates regularly with Radek Baborák, the Panocha Quartet, and the Altenberg Trio, and she receives invitations to chamber music festivals abroad. For many years she has been playing in the Belfiato Quintet, earing honours including third prize at the Henri Tomasi International Wind Quintet Competition in Marseille.

“During the day, I can switch between Bach and electro, Gregory Porter, Janáček, and Jacob Collier in my headphones”, says Javůrková. She enjoys spending time in natural surroundings “with her eyes and ears open”.

She plays an Alexander model 103 horn.