Viola Fascination

Composer(s)

Adam Skoumal is known to the audiences in Europe, USA, and Japan as one of the foremost Czech pianists and composers. He has appeared as soloist with leading Czech and Slovak orchestras (e.g., under the baton of Petr Altrichter, Serge Baudo, Lukasz Borowitz, Jiří Kout, Leoš Svárovský, Jakub Hrůša, Stanislav Vavřínek, Petr Vronský, Andreas Sebastian Weiser) and anumber of European orchestras, such as the Bamberger Symphoniker led by Jonathan Nott. In past years, he has performed at the concert series organized by the Czech Philharmonic, Prague Symphony Orchestra, Prague Chamber Philharmonia, Pilsen Philharmonia, Carlsbad Symphony Orchestra and at festivals such as Prague Spring, Prague Autumn, Janacek May Ostrava, Lípa Musica, Concentus Moraviae and Moravian Autumn. He regularly travels abroad with the Czech National Theatre Orchestra.

The first public recognition of Adam Skoumal as a composer occurred in the Prague Spring Competition 1998, when his playing of his own composition won a special prize for the best performance of a Czech contemporary piece. In 2006, he premiered his First Piano Concerto with the Prague Philharmonia and he also played his Second Piano Concerto with the Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra of South Bohemia in the same year. In the spring 2008, Shlomo Mintz premiered Skoumal's composition for violin and piano called "Djinnia" in Dubrovnik. Since then, Mr.Mintz has played the piece several times on his tour through South America and also in Rome and Milano in Italy. The orchestral version of Djinnia was performed in 2013 by Jiří Bělohlávek with Prague Philharmonia and broadcasted live on Czech TV. Another violin composition, "Variations on a Gypsy Melody", was chosen to be an obligatory piece in the International Violin Competition in Sion, Switzerland in 2009, as well as the First International Violin Competition in Buenos Aires, Argentina 2010.

Adam Skoumal studied at the Prague Conservatoire and the Academy of Performing Arts (under Jan Panenka and Peter Toperczer) and then continued abroad at prestigious universities in the USA. He won scholarships first at the SMU School of Arts in Dallas, Texas and two years later at the Manhattan School of Music, New York, where he was a protege of Ruth Laredo. During his studies he participated in several international master-classes given by such pianists as Lazar Berman, Philippe Entremont, András Schiff, Eugen Indjic and Marián Lapšanský.

Adam Skoumal won 1st prize in the Czech Conservatoires Competition, and in 1998 he won 2nd prize in the Prague Spring International Competition. He was also a prize-winner in other international competitions: Portugal (Porto 1999), Italy (Pinerolo 1999), USA (T. Leschetizky Competition) and a finalist in many other competitions, such as the W. Naumburg Competition and East & West Artists Competition in New York. In 2001, he won the main prize at the Young Podium Festival in Carlsbad for his performance of Rachmaninoff's Third Concerto.

Since 2012, he has passed his rich artistic experience on to his students at the Prague Conservatory, where he teaches the piano and chamber music performance.

Beyond performing the traditional classical repertoire and seldom-heard concertos (Dvořák, Novák), Adam Skoumal often includes his own compositions. He has also made several CD, Radio and TV recordings, including concertos by Rachmaninoff.

Aleksandr Konstantinovich Glazunov,
(b St Petersburg, 29 July/10 Aug 1865; d Paris, 21 March 1936). Russian composer. His father was a book publisher, his mother a pianist. Gifted with an exceptional ear and musical memory, he began to study the piano at the age of nine and to compose at the age of 11; his first teacher was Ėlenkovsky. In 1879 he met Balakirev, who recommended Rimsky-Korsakov as a private composition teacher. These studies lasted less than two years as the pupil progressed ‘not from day to day but from hour to hour’, in Rimsky-Korsakov's words. A lifelong friendship developed between teacher and student, despite the difference in age. When he was 16 Glazunov completed his First Symphony, which was given a successful première on 29 March 1882 under Balakirev's direction. In November of the same year Glazunov's First String Quartet was performed. His precocious talent aroused the interest of the art patron Mitrofan Belyayev, who devoted his immense fortune to furthering the career of Glazunov and the younger generation of Russian composers. In 1885 Belyayev organized the Russian Symphony Concerts in St Petersburg and a music publishing house in Leipzig. The ‘Belyayev Circle’, as it became known, assembled every Friday in the palatial home of the patron, and Glazunov, despite his youth, became a prominent member, with Rimsky-Korsakov, Lyadov, Vītols, Blumenfeld, V.V. Ėval'd and others. In a way, the Belyayev Circle continued from where The Five had left off, but with an important difference: by the 1880s, the battle for a national Russian school had been won; the Belyayev Circle consolidated the gains and effected a rapprochement with the West. As Rimsky-Korsakov said: ‘The Balakirev circle represented a period of battle and pressure on behalf of the development of Russian music’.

Dmitri Shostakovich: (b St Petersburg, 12/25 Sept 1906; d Moscow, 9 Aug 1975). Russian composer. He is generally regarded as the greatest symphonist of the mid-20th century, and many of his string quartets, concertos, instrumental and vocal works are also firmly established in the repertory. His numerous film scores, extensive incidental theatre music and three ballets are of more variable quality. In 1936, political intervention cut short his potentially outstanding operatic output; such interference continued to blight his career, belying the outward signs of official favour and recognition that increasingly came his way. Amid the conflicting pressures of official requirements, the mass suffering of his fellow countrymen, and his personal ideals of humanitarianism and public service, he succeeded in forging a musical language of colossal emotional power. The music of his middle period is often epic in scale and content; it has been understood by many Russians, and in more recent years also by Westerners, as chronicling his society and times, conveying moods and, as some would argue, experiences and even political messages in notes, at a time when to do so in words was proscribed. Since the appearance in 1979 of his purported memoirs, which expressed profound disaffection from the Soviet regime, his works have been intensely scrutinized for evidence of such explicit communication. However, his intentions in this respect continue to provoke disagreement, not least because of the problematic status of the sources involved. He published articles and made speeches under varying degrees of duress; for much of his life his correspondence was liable to be read by censors; he destroyed almost all letters sent to him; he kept no diary; and his reported confidences to friends and family are of varying reliability. Meanwhile, the musical dimensions of his works remain comparatively little examined. He played a decisive role in the musical life of the former Soviet Union, as teacher, writer and administrator. He was also an active pianist, frequently performing his own works until disability prevented him. His last concert appearance was in 1966

Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka (b Novospasskoye, nr Yelnya, Smolensk district, 20 May/1 June 1804; d Berlin, 15 Feb 1857). Russian composer. He was the first Russian composer to combine distinction in speaking the musical idiom of the day with a personal and strongly original voice. Emerging from the background of a provincial dilettante, though with generous access to local music-making opportunties, he made himself at home in metropolitan centres and mastered the procedures of Italian and French opera, and complemented that expertise with skill in motivic and contrapuntal working as well as instrumentation. His compositions, especially the operas A Life for the Tsar and Ruslan and Lyudmila and the orchestral fantasia Kamarinskaya, represent cornerstones of what are known as the ‘Russian classics’, and furnished models for later 19th-century composers.

Modest Musorgsky (b Karevo, Pskov district, 9/21 March 1839; d St Petersburg, 16/28 March 1881). Russian composer. His life was disjointed, ending in loneliness and poverty, and at the time of his death some of his most important compositions were left unfinished. His greatest achievements were as a composer of operas and solo songs. Largely self-taught and highly intellectual, he discovered a way of writing for the voice that was both lyrical and true to the inflections of speech. He was the most strikingly individual Russian composer of the later 19th century and an avatar of modernism for the generation of Debussy and Ravel.

Niccolò Paganini: (b Genoa, 27 Oct 1782; d Nice, 27 May 1840). Italian violinist and composer. By his development of technique, his exceptional skills and his extreme personal magnetism he not only contributed to the history of the violin as its most famous virtuoso but also drew the attention of other Romantic composers, notably Liszt, to the significance of virtuosity as an element in art. As a composer of a large number of chamber works, mostly with or for guitar, Paganini was influential in furthering the performance and appreciation of music in private circles.

Piotr Ilich Tchaikovsky: (b Kamsko-Votkinsk, Vyatka province, 25 April/7 May 1840; d St Petersburg, 25 Oct/6 Nov 1893). Russian composer. He was the first composer of a new Russian type, fully professional, who firmly assimilated traditions of Western European symphonic mastery; in a deeply original, personal and national style he united the symphonic thought of Beethoven and Schumann with the work of Glinka, and transformed Liszt’s and Berlioz’s achievements in depictive-programmatic music into matters of Shakespearian elevation and psychological import (Boris Asaf’yev).

Robert Schumann: (b Zwickau, Saxony, 8 June 1810; d Endenich, nr Bonn, 29 July 1856). German composer and music critic. While best remembered for his piano music and songs, and some of his symphonic and chamber works, Schumann made significant contributions to all the musical genres of his day and cultivated a number of new ones as well. His dual interest in music and literature led him to develop a historically informed music criticism and a compositional style deeply indebted to literary models. A leading exponent of musical Romanticism, he had a powerful impact on succeeding generations of European composers.

Sergey Rachmaninov: (b Oneg, 20 March/1 April 1873; d Beverly Hills, CA, 28 March 1943). Russian composer, pianist and conductor. He was one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, the last great representative of Russian late Romanticism. The influences of Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and other Russian composers soon gave way to a thoroughly personal idiom, with a pronounced lyrical quality, expressive breadth, structural ingenuity and a palette of rich, distinctive orchestral colours.

Sergey Prokofiev (b Sontsovka, Bakhmutsk region, Yekaterinoslav district, Ukraine, 11/23 April 1891; d Moscow, 5 March 1953). Russian composer and pianist. He began his career as a composer while still a student, and so had a deep investment in Russian Romantic traditions – even if he was pushing those traditions to a point of exacerbation and caricature – before he began to encounter, and contribute to, various kinds of modernism in the second decade of the new century. Like many artists, he left his country directly after the October Revolution; he was the only composer to return, nearly 20 years later. His inner traditionalism, coupled with the neo-classicism he had helped invent, now made it possible for him to play a leading role in Soviet culture, to whose demands for political engagement, utility and simplicity he responded with prodigious creative energy. In his last years, however, official encouragement turned into persecution, and his musical voice understandably faltered.