Farewell to the season: chamber recital by Kristian Mráček and Veronika Jaklová

Concert programme:

Leoš Janáček: Sonata for Violin and Piano

Antonín Dvořák: Romance for Violin and Piano in F minor, Op. 11

Karol Szymanowski: Myths, Op. 30

Kristian Mráček studied at the Prague Conservatory with Jiří Fišer, later continued his studies with Jiří Vodička and at the same time studied with Bohuslav Matoušek at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. Since September 2025 he has been a student of solo performance in the master's programme at the Hochschule für Musik Luzern in the class of Prof. Igor Karsko. He is a laureate of a number of national and international competitions, including the Josef Micka Violin Competition, Talents for Europe, Kocian Violin Competition and Ohrid Pearls. He also won 2nd prize at the Václav Hudeček Summer Academy. In addition to his duo with Veronika Jaklova, he also achieved significant success with cellist David Pěruška at the Concertino Praga competition, where they won 1st prize in chamber music, the Audience Award, the EMCY prize and recorded a CD for Czech Radio. As a member of a piano trio, he also won the Grand Prix at the Ohrid Pearls competition in 2022. As a soloist, he has performed with the Hradec Králové Philharmonic, the Czechoslovak Chamber Orchestra Prague and the Prague Conservatory String Orchestra, and has appeared at festivals such as Dvořák's Prague and For the Treasures of Broumovsko. Kristian has also participated in masterclasses with Stefan Milenković, Vadim Repin, Dalibor Karvay and others. He is a scholarship holder of the Stadler-Trier Music Foundation.

Veronika Jaklová studied at the Prague Conservatory under Milan Langer and Ivo Kahánek. Now she is studying at the Prague Academy of Performing Arts in the class of Jan Bartos. She is a laureate of many international competitions (Young Piano of the Prague Conservatory, International Piano Competition in Pilsen, Beethoven's Teplice, Gustav Mahler Prize Piano Competition, WPTA International Competition in Finland, Ohrid Pearls in North Macedonia, absolute victory in the Orbetello Junior Piano Competition in Italy, third prize in the Santa Cecília International Competition in Portugal). In 2020 she won the Yamaha Music Foundation Scholarship Competition, and a year later she was the recipient of the prestigious EMCY Award. She has appeared at the Dvořák Prague Festival, Prague Spring Festival, Orbetello Piano Festivali and Contatti Sonori in Turin, Italy, and in concerts in Germany, Poland and Luxembourg. As a soloist she has performed with the Karlovy Vary Symphony Orchestra and the Prague Student Symphony Orchestra. She has participated in masterclasses under Paul Lewis and Lukáš Vondráček at the Dvořák Prague Festival, Avedis Kouyoumdjian, Saleem Ashkar, Einar Steen-Noklberg and others.