Every year at this time you organize Music Holidays in Prague. This year’s opening concert was to take place on October 27. Is it difficult to come up with an alternative date so that viewers do not feel impoverished?
In the current situation, it is really complicated. Fortunately, our great audience trusts us and is accommodating. I believe that we will not disappoint them this time either, because our soloists and PKF – Prague Philharmonia and conductor are ready to fully replace the program whenever there is a free date.
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Covid also ruined the interesting project Klasika o čtvrté, which was to start at the beginning of October. What’s going on?
It will be an absolutely unique cycle of chamber concerts in Rudolfinum, performed and performed by the excellent pianist Ivo Kahánek. It will be about thanking the audience, which has been filling concert halls for decades. The form and start times of the performance are being adapted to the older generation. So far, until the reopening of concert life, the performances will be streamed, but I firmly believe that they will soon start performing live in their unique form.
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Despite all this, you were certainly pleased with the Václav Hudeček Academy, which took place in the summer in Luhačovice. Do you continue to follow the steps of the winners?
We managed its 24th year without restrictions, with the exception of the reintroduction of drapes for the audience, which lasted until our activities stopped. I have to thank the concert goers who filled the halls despite this unpleasant obligation. I really appreciate it and I’m definitely not alone. Of course, we are watching the Luhačovice winners and some of them have already become my colleagues and collaborators in the meantime. We rejoice in their success and try to help them outside the field of music.
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Don’t young performers run from classical music to lighter genres?
The really best ones do not have such tendencies, nor do they need it. They receive a lot of offers from big stages both at home and abroad, on which so-called classical music is played. So why should they change the arts for the entertainment industry?
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When I looked at the names of the best, it turned out that girls tend to be more successful. She scored sixteen times, while I came to number ten for the boys’ names. Why is it?
Students between the ages of eleven and twenty-eight go to our Academy. Children around the age of fifteen usually win, and at this age girls, due to the well-known fact that they grow up earlier, tend to be more mature in music. The boys leave again later. Falling in love with them testifies and inspires them, while in girls, a flare-up of emotions can sometimes be a temporary interruption of interest in the world around them.
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Renowned violinist David Oistrach with Václav Hudeček during a rehearsal in the Prague Municipal House in June 1970.
Photo: archive, Law
You made your debut on November 12, 1967 at a concert with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London. A day later, the legendary David Oistrach predicted a great future for the fifteen-year-old violinist from Bohemia. How do you remember your teacher?
It is not possible to remember David Oistrach in such a small area. He was an extraordinarily humble, wishing man who helped not only his students but also students of competing professors. He was brave already during the Great Patriotic War, when he twice flew across the front to blocked Leningrad and played concerts there. And so I could go on. David was simply the greatest.
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Is that why you undertook the search for talent and the support of the next generation of performers?
When my wife Eva (actress and writer) and I watched developments after 1989, as classical music and art gradually came to the forefront of media interest and the entertainment industry was gaining ground, we couldn’t stay indifferent. We founded the Music Holidays in Prague, which will celebrate thirty years next season, and the Academy in Luhačovice, which will be twenty-five next year. Fifteen years ago, we started working with the non-commercial TV Noe, for which Eva invented the project My Homeland, a series of concerts in memorable places in our country. It presents young artists and art patrons who support it. We already have almost fifty parts. David Oistrach and his approach to us, then young colleagues, certainly play a part in this perception of the world.
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The violin has enchanted you at the age of five. Who brought Vašík to them?
An excess of temperament, the inability to tame it and the opinion of the father of a veterinarian and an amateur violinist that everyone should be able to play notes and play something.
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Do you play any other instrument?
Thanks to my father, the choice was clear and I played the piano a bit, but it was just an obligatory at the conservatory.
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Next year you will celebrate the 55th season of performing on our and world stages. Where do you like to play the most?
It was beautiful everywhere I played, but it was always different at home. For fifty-five years, the halls have been filled with listeners who have already come with their grandchildren, and sometimes they are the great-grandchildren of my first supporters. And this is a feeling of pricelessness and a huge gratitude to their loyalty. I wish it to all honest young musicians who are starting today.
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You often give concerts and perform in Luhačovice and in Moravia in general. Is it a matter of the heart?
We love it and the frequent stay in this hospitable area is more related to other activities, in addition to the Luhačovice Academy, these are Music Holidays, formerly in Moravské Budějovice and now in Třebíč. Although these cities are now the Vysočina Region. Moravians are passionately music-loving.
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Five years ago, you were the only Czech in history to receive the Order of the Knight of the Italian Star award from the President of the Italian Republic. Do you consider it your most important award?
It was definitely a great honor for me, which I did not expect. I consider Italy to be the inventor of art, and what this country has historically accomplished in this field is gigantic. But I no less appreciate the award from President Václav Klaus, who can also appreciate classical music.
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The recording of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons is the most successful title created after November 1989. With which author do you feel similarly well?
When there are so many, everyone else and everyone is brilliant. How to choose between Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Dvořák, Tchaikovsky… This is the infinity of beauty.
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You will be one of the four patrons of Czech Television Advent concerts. They have been helping the needy for thirty years. What device will you face?
It is the Pardubice Crossroads, a facility for patients with limited congenital movement caused by injury or illness. It is very beneficial and incredibly touching how they take care of patients there. He deserves great respect.
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During your various meetings after concerts and events, your sincere and kind-hearted smile cannot be overlooked. You literally look at me like the sun. Happiness radiates from you…
I have a wonderful wife, I have married a great family and we have loyal friends. I do a job that fills me. I’m a happy person.
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