Like father, like daughter

Popular Czech violinist Jaroslav Svěcený has played on concert stages around the world, appeared on radio and television innumerable times and recorded 40 CDs. But at the Rudolfinum June 20, he was just like any other parent in the audience as he waited for his daughter to perform.

"I was nervous," he says. "She was fine, but I was very nervous."

Svěcený's daughter Julie, 16, was the winner in the violin category of this year's Concertino Praga competition conducted by Czech Radio. She played Ravel's Rhapsody for Violin and Orchestra in a laureates' concert that was broadcast live on 10 European radio stations.

"The next morning, I had 25 or 30 e-mails from different countries," Svěcený says with a proud smile. "Was that your daughter? She was wonderful! Can she come play here?"

Prague music fans need not go far to see Julie play. She will be joining her father next week for the opening concert of this year's Tones of Chodov, the eclectic crossover festival held every summer at the Chodov Water Fortress. A one-timed medieval redoubt that now serves as a culture center, Chodov gives Svěcený carte blanche to program a concert series with no rules or boundaries.

And he takes full advantage of the opportunity.

"The dramaturgy must be really interesting and different," he says. "There's no reason to do 30 concerts of music that you can hear at the Rudolfinum or Obecní dům the rest of the year. My idea is to do six really different, very special concerts."

At the opening concert (July 20), Svěcený and his daughter will be joined by two other violinists - Dana Vlachová, Julie's instructor at the conservatory, and Martin Kos - and the Virtuosi Pragenses chamber orchestra for an evening of Telemann, Bach and Vivaldi. The program includes rarely heard Vivaldi concertos for three and four violins. "Everybody knows The Four Seasons," Svěcený says. "But nobody knows these concertos, which are just as good."

Another conservatory professor, Dalibor Štrunc, takes center stage the following night with his cimbal, a type of hammer dulcimer also known as a cimbalom. Svěcený will accompany him in a program ranging from 18th-century to contemporary music that cuts across folk, classical and jazz. Štrunc has a reputation as a wizard on the cimbal, which he sometimes plays with his bare hands.

The next two concerts are plugged-in affairs. Rock guitarist Radim Hladík brings his band Blue Effect to join Svěcený and a children's choir for what the violinist says will be "a very strange combination, but very interesting music" (July 22). And the great jazz bass player Pavel Ryba is bringing his aptly named Fish Men for a bifurcated evening of Baroque and jazz (July 26). "The first half is historical music for a historical setting, including some famous Corelli compositions," Svěcený says. "Then after intermission, when it's dark, the jazz musicians come out."

Speaking of history, Svěcený is a student of 18th- and 19th-century violin-making, and recently released a handsome illustrated book on the subject. For the fifth concert (July 27), he will be giving one of his combination performance/lectures (in Czech), playing a variety of historic violins and talking about the differences in construction and sound quality. There's no translation for English speakers, but the music should be sweet - Mozart, Dvořák, Pleyel, Smetana and Massenet, accompanied by Karel Untermüller on viola and Marie Synková on piano.

The final concert (July 28) offers a more conventional program, at least in the first half, with Svěcený joined by a guitar, cello and piano trio for a selection of vocal works by the likes of Puccini, Verdi and Leoncavallo. The singer is local tenor David Uličník, who is equally at home on opera stages or in Broadway musicals, which makes him an ideal choice for the second half of the program, a sampling of popular stage and film music.

By then, Julie Svěcená will be on tour in south Bohemia, playing a series of concert dates that come with winning the Concertino Praga prize. This is the most important part of the award, according to Svěcený, who might be speaking for himself and the friends he's enlisted for this year's Chodov festival when he says, "That's the best prize - not money, but a chance to play."

Frank Kuznik can be reached at
fkuznik@praguepost.com