Monika Štreitová is a Czech flautist, professor of transverse flute, and associate professor at the University of Évora (Portugal), where she also serves as dean of the music faculty.
She is the daughter of documentary photographer Jindřich Štreit and Agnes Štreitová, who taught her to play the violin and recorder from the age of four. She studied transverse flute with Lubomír Kantor in Olomouc and continued with Jiří Bystroň at the Janáček Conservatory in Ostrava. She graduated from the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava under Prof. Miloš Jurkovič, where she obtained the title of Doctor of Arts. From the beginning of her studies, she collaborated with jazz musicians (Jiří Stivín, Jana Koubková, etc.) and classical music performers. In addition to performing Baroque and classical music, she developed a strong relationship with contemporary classical music and became its devoted performer. She has collaborated with renowned composers such as J. Y. Bosseur, R. Berger, V. Bokes, D. MacMouline, B. Schaeffer, J. Guillou, P. Leroux, Ch. Bochmann, J. P. Oliveira, I. Soveral, Á. Salazar, L. Matoušek, and M. Rataj. She has inspired the creation of dozens of new compositions and, by the end of 2021, had performed more than 200 compositions for solo flute or chamber ensembles with flute in world premieres and recorded 23 CDs. She also premiered a composition dedicated to her, “Ticho” (Silence) by Mojmír Hanák, with the Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra.
She received the highest award from music critics at Radio Vltava (5 violin keys) for her CDs Luminiscence (2007), Ibéria (2013), Machina Lírica (2014), and Sérenade aux Étoiles (2021). Numerous foreign critics have also recognised her artistry.
…one should highlight the spectacular musicians Monika Streitová (flute) and Pedro Rodrigues (guitar), who showed how the contemporary music scene has superb musicians in Portugal.” (Público Journal, Lisbon).
“It was always a great pleasure for me to hear Monika Duarte Streitová play, her musicality and sensitivity. I am continuously convinced that Monika Duarte Streitová is a great talent on the flute, and also a brilliant and sensible musician.” (István Matuz, Professor at Debrecen University and international concert soloist).
Monika Štreitová was a founding member of several chamber ensembles, collaborated with many orchestras and conductors, and performed at major festivals such as the City of London Festival, Warsaw Autumn, and Festival de Música do Séc. XX e XIX at the Guggenheim Museum (Bilbao), Elektronische Frühling (Vienna), Bratislava Music Festival, Melos Éthos (Bratislava), Musica Iudaica Prague, Expozice nové hudby (Brno), Forfest (Kroměříž), “Ostrava Days of New Music”, “Musik für Ravensbrück”, “Dni Muzyki Kompozytorów Krakowskich”, “Música Viva” (Porto, Lisbon), and has given recitals in Tokyo, Paris, Madrid, Berlin, Valencia, and Frankfurt.
Anna Paulová is one of the most prominent Czech clarinettists of the younger generation. In 2015, she won second prize at the Prague Spring International Music Competition, where she also received several notable awards, including the Bohuslav Martinů Foundation Prize and the Gideon Klein Foundation Prize. She had already won awards in many important Czech and international clarinet competitions, including Marco Fiorindo Turin and Giacomo Mensi Breno (Italy), Krško (Slovenia), Markneukirchen, Oldenburg, and Possehl-Musikpreis Lübeck (Germany), Wrocław (Poland), the Yamaha Scholarship, and others. In 2016, she became the overall winner of the Bohuslav Martinů Foundation Competition. In 2019, she advanced to the semifinals of the prestigious ARD International Music Competition in Munich. She is the recipient of the Viktor Kalabis and Zuzana Růžičková Foundation Award for the best student at HAMU in Prague in 2020. She won the special Golden Medal prize at the Vienna International Music Competition (2019) and the Manhattan International Music Competition (2022). In November 2022, she performed at the Salon de Virtuosi festival at the Bohemian National Hall in New York, and in November 2023 with the Orchestra Sinfonica di Sanremo at the Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza, Italy.
Among her most recent achievements is the Jiří Bělohlávek Award, which she won in 2024. She also won first prize at the Rising Stars Grand Prix 2024 competition in Berlin.
She studied at the Prague Conservatory with Milan Polák and Ludmila Peterková and at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague with Jiří Hlaváč and Vlastimil Mareš. She continued her studies at the Musikhochschule Lübeck, where she attended classes with Sabine Meyer and Reiner Wehle. She further expanded her studies at the Royal Conservatoire Antwerp with Annelien van Wauwe and at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome under the guidance of Maestro Alessandro Carbonara. In 2024, she completed her doctoral studies at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague.
She has participated in several masterclasses led by top soloists and teachers (Sharon Kam, Shirley Brill, Charles Neidich, Yehuda Gilad, Martin Fröst, François Benda, Philippe Berrod, Paul Meyer, Karl Leister, Wenzel Fuchs, Michel Lethiec, and many others).
She made her concert debut at the age of fifteen with the PKF – Prague Philharmonia and conductor Leoš Svárovský. In 2014, she performed as a soloist with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Jiří Bělohlávek. She later performed as a soloist with other leading Czech and foreign orchestras, such as the Czech Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Pardubice Chamber Philharmonic, the Bohuslav Martinů Philharmonic Zlín, the North Czech Philharmonic Teplice, the Moravian Philharmonic Olomouc, the Münchener Kammerorchester, Orquestra de Câmarade Cascais e Oeiras, Portugal, Orchestra Sinfonica Siciliana, and others. She has collaborated with many conductors, including Tomáš Brauner, Robert Kružík, Leoš Svárovský, Vojtěch Spurný, Jakub Klecker, Jiří Rožeň, Chuhei Iwasaki, Jiří Habart, Debashish Chaudhuri, Sander Teepen, Jan Jakub Bokun, Nikolay Lalov, Nicolas Ellis, Wojciech Rajski, Antonino Cascio, Giancarlo De Lorenzo, and Eliseo Castrignanò.
In addition to her solo career, he devotes himself to chamber music. She collaborates with several outstanding instrumentalists, including Charles Neidich, Ludmila Peterková, Ivo Kahánek, Martin Kasík, Václav Hudeček, Jan Mráček, Tomáš Jamník, Jana Boušková, and Lubomír Brabec.
She focuses on works by Czech composers of the 20th and 21st centuries (Bohuslav Martinů, Karel Husa, Viktor Kalabis, Josef Páleníček, Miloslav Ištvan, Jiří Teml, Zdeněk Šesták, etc.) and also collaborates with younger composers. She also performs Mozart’s clarinet concerto in its original version for basset clarinet.
In June 2023, she released her debut album with music by Karel Husa and Bohuslav Martinů on the Supraphon label, featuring pianist Ivo Kahánek and other leading performers. In January 2025, her next album, Clarinet Metamorphoses, will be released, recorded with the Czech Radio Symphony Orchestra and conducted by Tomáš Brauner.
Moritz Ernst, born in 1986 in Ostwestfalen, Germany, started playing the piano at the age of five, taking lessons in Detmold. After graduating from high school at the early age of 16, he continued his piano studies in 2002 at the Detmolder Musikhochschule, where he also studied musicology. Later on, he continued his studies in London and Basel.
Moritz Ernst is currently concertising as pianist, harpsichordist and chamber musician, performing a wide range of repertoire from baroque to contemporary music. Concerts include appearances worldwide, as well as at major Festivals (Beethovenfest Bonn, etc.). Apart from his busy performance schedule he has taught masterclasses at major institutions (conservatories of Malmö, Stuttgart, Bern, Shanghai, Boston…).
Music of the 20th and 21st century is especially dear to his heart. Ernst has premiered several works and collaborated closely with composers such as Peter Eötvös, Wolfgang Rihm, Sandeep Bhagwati, Detlef Heusinger, Miklós Maros, and others, some of whom have dedicated works to him. In addition, he advocates the forgotten and less played composers; for example by performing Johann Nepomuk Hummel’s Sonata op. 106, Feruccio Busoni‘s Fantasia contrappuntistica and the music of Samuel Scheidt, as well as music for the 16th- tone – piano.
The international press has praised Moritz Ernst highly for his superb recordings. The Classical Music Magazine awarded him its highest rating. Gramophone praised his sparkling and stimulating interpretations. Diapason and Fono Forum both awarded him top marks (5/5) for his Lourié and Ullmann recordings. In addition, he has performed and recorded for international radio stations. He recorded the complete piano works of Viktor Ullmann and the sonatas by Norbert von Hannenheim on two CDs in collaboration with Deutschlandradio and the CD label EDA Records.
In 2014 he recorded the Piano Concerto by Victor Ullmann with the Dortmund Philharmonic under Gabriel Feltz. In 2016 a 3-CD box set with the complete piano works by Arthur Lourié was issued by Capriccio, as well as other recordings, including the Viktor Ullmann piano concerto and a CD of Haydn piano sonatas. In 2020 he recorded selected piano pieces by the neglected Irish-American composer Swan Hennessy on the Perfect Noise label.
In 2013 Moritz Ernst gave his debut performance with the Symphony Orchestra Bern (Switzerland). In 2014, his highly acclaimed Asian debut took place.There he also held masterclasses and lectures at the University of Malaysia and the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. In 2015 he embarked on several other extensive tours, most notably to Teheran, Montreal and Toronto. In 2017 his commitment to ostracized music led him to an appearance at the German Bundestag (parliament). Since 2018 his concert appearances have taken place on a
worldwide scale, commuting between his native Europe, North America, Asia and Australia.
After finishing his recordings of Hans Erich Apostel’s piano works, Moritz Ernst has just recorded all of Karel Reiner’s piano works for Deutschlandradio. The 2023/24 season saw him performing both in North America and Asia, including live broadcasts from Vienna and TV
recordings for ARTE, as well as his debut with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra.
So far he has performed under leading conductors, such as Mario Venzago, Stefan Blunier, Dorian Wilson or Gabriel Feltz.
His experience as a musicologist has led to a collaboration with the publishers Schott and Boosey & Hawkes, for whom he recently edited the piano and organ works of Schoenberg pupil Norbertvon Hannenheim.
Moritz Ernst is an official member of Steinway Artists.
Czech composer Kryštof Mařatka lives and works in Prague and Paris. The versatility that characterizes his artistic activity in several countries is often seen as a strong bond that he creates between the different cultural worlds from which he draws inspiration or which he explores, while discovering new avenues of musical expression. Kryštof Mařatka’s catalog of works well reflects the author’s affinity for various more or less evocative sources and themes, some of which recur regularly and are present throughout his work. These include traditional world music, the birth of human speech, prehistoric art, and musical instruments from the Paleolithic era. Other compositions evoke intimate worlds with more personal accents, such as dreams, contemplation, and memories—a collection of legacies, sometimes woven as allegories of childhood spent in a totalitarian country. Melodramas written to various texts (Karel Čapek, Franz Kafka, Daniil Harms…) form a very special category in Kryštof Mařatka’s work, while in other works the focus of the score is on the instrumental aspect and the art of the performer, who strives to combine virtuosity, technique, and inventiveness in harmony with the sonic nature of the instrument. Other works by Kryštof Mařatka are intended for the youngest musicians and were created especially for educational projects organized by institutions such as the Philharmonie de Paris (DEMOS), national, regional, or municipal conservatories, or abroad, such as the Hochschule in Trossingen or the Conservatory in Prague. The catalog is complemented by various arrangements and transcriptions, which form a coherent whole with the author’s original compositions, as they often arise from the musical practice of the author and his surroundings.
Many institutions, festivals, and orchestras have commissioned, programmed, and/or performed compositions by Kryštof Mařatka: Donaueschinger Musiktage SWR Festival (Germany), Caramoor Festival (USA), Philharmonie de Paris, Opera and National Theater in Prague, Prague Symphony Orchestra FOK, Festival Pablo Casals de Prades, Colorado Symphony Orchestra (USA), Ensemble Calliopée, Alte Oper Frankfurt, Shanghai Grand Théâtre, Festival MUSICA de Strasbourg, Festival l’Automne de Varsovie, Wigmor Hall in London, Théâtre des Champs Elysées in Paris, Festival Ars Musica in Brussels, Kuhmo Festival (Finland), Philharmonie de Rotterdam, Printemps de Prague Festival, Philharmonie de Helsinki, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Orchestre National de France, Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra, Chœur de Radio France, Polish Chamber Choir Gdansk, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Ensemble Modern… As a conductor, Kryštof Mařatka performs with symphony orchestras and various ensembles in programs that are often built around his own works, but which also offer compositions from the classical-romantic repertoire and works by his contemporaries. Kryštof Mařatka has conducted, for example, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the Nederlands Kamerorkest at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Prague Philharmonia Orchestra, the Sinfonia Varsovia Orchestra, the Polish National Radio Orchestra, the Orchestre National de Lille, the Prague National Opera Orchestra, and many others.
Kryštof Mařatka also performs as a pianist. His physical relationship with the instrument and his confrontation with the art of interpretation conditioned by mastery of playing are one of the keys to his compositional thinking. He studied piano at the Prague Conservatory (1986-1992) and continues the tradition of the Czech piano school. He continues to perform as a soloist or together with other chamber musicians. In addition to his own music, he often demonstrates his passion for the works of Leoš Janáček or for improvisation. In this way, he strives to bring the magic of musical creation closer to the audience through the experience of the birth of a work, which the audience experiences in real time. Kryštof Mařatka is the author of the film De ta vie (74 min, in Czech with French and English subtitles), which is dedicated to his father, Zdeněk Mařatka. This eminent physician, born in 1914, lived through eight different political regimes: against the backdrop of philosophical reflections and discussions between several generations of one family, the entire 20th century unfolds in this film. In 2016, a book with a DVD about the making of the film was published (in French, English, and Czech), to which the film is attached on DVD and USB (Tomáš Doruška Productions – Prague). His works have been recorded by many performers, and three monographic CDs with works by Kryštof Mařatka have been released: one dedicated to his chamber music (CD Lyrinx), another to his concert compositions with orchestra (CD Arion), and the last to his music for ensemble (CD Dux). In 2016, the National Film Archive released a DVD with the Czech silent film Batalion from 1927 with original music by Kryštof Mařatka, commissioned by the Louvre Museum.
As a conductor, Kryštof Mařatka has also recorded a CD for Challenge Classics with Alexander Raskatov’s Obikhod, the Hilliard Ensemble, and the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra. As a pianist, he was asked by Czech Radio in 2015 to record Leoš Janáček’s The Diary of One Who Disappeared with tenor Aleš Briscein. In 2006, he won first prize and the audience prize at the Tansman competition and festival in Łódź (Poland) for his work Luminarium – a mosaic of twenty-seven fragments of world music – a concerto for clarinet.
Kryštof Mařatka also won first prize in the music composition competition at the Printemps de Shanghai festival in China (2007) and from Radio France for his work Chant g’hai for suona (Chinese oboe) and symphony orchestra. The composition was included in the program of the World Expo in Shanghai in 2010 and was performed again in 2017 by the Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra with soloist Hu Chen Yun. In 2007, he won the Pierre Cardin Prize from the Academy of Fine Arts in Paris for musical composition. In 2007, a documentary film about Kryštof Mařatka’s musical world was shot and produced: “Naissance d’un imaginaire” (Birth of Imagination) – (26 min, Karl More Productions), which was broadcast on the European television station Mezzo.
Jan Dušek is a Czech composer and pianist of the middle generation who strives to connect tradition with the present in both his fields. His compositions are emotionally powerful and musically expressive, and he does not hesitate to use melody, tonality, or 20th-century techniques to convey his ideas. He draws on the ideas of the “New Sincerity” movement, among other things, which makes his music appealing not only to listeners but also to performers.
While still a student at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague in Hanuš Bartoň’s class, he attracted attention by repeatedly winning the Generace composition competition, where he won first prize twice in a row (2006 …již za sedm dnů sešlu na zemi déšť… [In Seven Days I Will Send Rain Upon the Earth], 2007 Gradace pro varhany [Gradation for Organ]). Among his most significant works is the cycle Chalomot yehudi’im (Jewish Dreams), which won the Gideon Klein Prize and the Audience Prize in the NuBERG competition organised by the BERG Orchestra. This composition was even selected for a concert broadcast live by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), reaching several thousand listeners around the world. Another frequently performed piece is the compulsory composition for the Prague Spring Competition for solo clarinet, Unsent Letter, which several performers around the world has taken up.
Performers of his compositions include leading figures on the world music scene, including clarinettists Liliana Lefebvre, Irvin Venyš, Aurelian Bacan, and Gonçalo Pinto, oboist Bart Schneemann, and flautists Monika Štreitová and Matei Ioachimescu. He has collaborated repeatedly with renowned ensembles such as the Nederlands Blazers Ensemble, the Prague Philharmonic Choir under the baton of Lukáš Vasilek, the BERG Orchestra, and the Prague Philharmonia. His works have been performed across Europe, from Paris, Lisbon, Luxembourg, Amsterdam, Porto, and Prague to Cluj, Romania, and have been recorded on numerous albums.
As a pianist, he specialises in the interpretation of lesser-known works, especially from the 20th century. He made a unique recording of Rudolf Karel’s complete piano works for Czech Radio. He released an internationally acclaimed album of Viktor Ullmann’s songs with Irena Troupová. Together with other performers, they also recorded Hans Winterberg’s complete songs. Jan Dušek also performs as a piano partner to top singers such as Jana Sibera, Jana Hrochová, Roman Janál, and Javier Arrey. Many composers have also entrusted him with the premiere performances of their works (Juraj Filas, Ivan Kurz, Zdeněk Bartošík, Daniel Chudovský, and many others).
He has given concerts throughout Europe, Israel, and Hong Kong. He has performed repeatedly at major festivals, including the Prague Spring, Eternal Hope, and the Festival of Young Artists Bayreuth.
World-renowned personalities have shaped his piano interpretation – he has attended masterclasses with Cyprien Katsaris, Irina Ossipova, Angela Hewitt, and Maria João Pires, and studied under Robert Lehrbauer, Xiao-Mei Zhu (Conservatoire Supérieur de Paris), and Gordon Fergus-Thompson (Royal College of Music London). Thanks to his wide range of influences and compositional thinking, he can combine deep emotionality with analytical thinking and the necessary brilliance across all stylistic periods of music.
In addition to his concert and compositional activities, he teaches composition at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague.
