Jan Čmejla’s Matinée

Jan Čmejla has a string of further successes to his name: we could mention his victories in the Santa Cecilia International Piano Competition in Porto, the International Music Festival Competition in Paris, or the competitions for young pianists Jeune Chopin in Lugano, Virtuosi per musica di pianoforte in Ústí nad Labem and Concertino Praga, where he won the title of outright winner in 2019. He is likewise the recipient of the coveted Golden Nut prize (Zlatý oříšek), awarded to some of the most talented children in the Czech Republic, and also the Kern Foundation Prize. He is currently studying with Wolfram Schmitt-Leonardy at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Mannheim. In 2024 the Radioservis label released his very first album entitled PřeSkoumáno / Reviewed. Part of the recording’s playlist also features on his Prague Spring programme, which he will open with the delicate Berceuse Op. 57 by Fryderyk Chopin (1810–1849) and a piece bearing the same name by Adam Skoumal (*1969), whom Čmejla describes as “the Chopin of the 21^st century”.

Piano virtuoso and composer Leopold Godowsky (1870–1938), whose pupils included the legendary Heinrich Neuhaus, wrote a total of fifty-three arrangements of two of Chopin’s celebrated opuses – Études Op. 10 and Op. 25. The concert programme features an arrangement of the enchanting Étude in A flat major Op. 25 and a study for the left hand after Étude in E flat minor Op. 10, in which Godowsky looks to the French Impressionist style while furnishing the original with an entirely new palette of colours.

Without exaggeration one could describe Études by Gÿorgy Ligeti (1923–2006) as the most important addition to the world piano repertoire over the last half century. “I lay my ten fingers on the keyboard and imagine music. My fingers copy this mental image as I press the keys, but this copy is very inexact: a feedback emerges between ideas and tactile/motor execution. This feedback loop repeats itself many times, enriched by provisional sketches […]. The result sounds completely different from my initial conceptions: the anatomical reality of my hands and the configuration of the piano keyboard have transformed my imaginary constructs,” Ligeti stated, describing the genesis of his compositions for piano. The end product far transcends the technical proficiency required for works by Chopin or even Liszt: here it’s not just a question of digital acrobatics, but of the ability to divide the brain into two independent halves. The Études acquired the status of a “new classic” almost immediately, appearing in the repertoire of various musical icons, such as Yuja Wang and Pierre-Laurent Aimard. Jan Čmejla will perform four of them, including the above-mentioned Devil’s Staircase, a piece inspired by the composer’s three-hour battle with relentless winds caused by the El Niño weather system during a bike ride in Santa Barbara, California.

The programme will end with Variations on a Theme of Chopin Op. 22 by Sergei Rachmaninov (1873–1943). Rachmaninov took his theme from Chopin’s dark, 13-bar largo, Prelude in C minor Op. 28, which he shortened to nine bars and arranged into twenty-two parts. “I’ve been listening to this piece since I was fifteen. When I heard it for the first time, I simply fell in love with it straight away,” Jan Čmejla adds. His matinée in St Agnes’ Convent on 17 May will certainly be offering a programme filled with extraordinary qualities and fascinating stories.