Lukáš Vondráček

Following recent debuts with the Pittsburgh and Tokyo Metropolitan symphony orchestras, hr-Sinfonieorchester and Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Lukáš Vondráček has a season packed with highlights ahead of him. In 2019/20 the indisputable winner of the International Queen Elisabeth Piano Competition 2016 will make his debuts with London symphony, Utah Symphony and North Carolina Symphony Orchestras and has been reinvited to perform with Colorado Symphony Orchestra, Belgian National Orchestra and Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège to just mention a few.

Over the last decade Lukáš Vondráček has travelled the world working with orchestras such as the Philadelphia and Sydney Symphony orchestras, Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo, Philharmonia, Oslo Philharmonic and Netherlands Philharmonic orchestras. Recitals have taken him to Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie, Deutschlandfunk Cologne, the Flagey in Brussels, Leipzig’s Gewandhaus, Wiener Konzerthaus, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and to festivals such as Menuhin Festival Gstaad and PianoEspoo in Finland.

At the age of four Lukáš Vondráček made his first public appearance. As a fifteen-year-old in 2002 he made his debut with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra and Vladimir Ashkenazy which was followed by a major US tour in 2003. His natural and assured musicality and remarkable technique have long marked him out as a gifted and mature musician. He has achieved worldwide recognition by receiving many international awards including first prizes at the Hilton Head and San Marino International Piano Competitions and Unisa International Piano Competition in Pretoria, South Africa, as well as the Raymond E. Buck Jury Discretionary Award at the 2009 International Van Cliburn Piano Competition.
Lukáš Vondráček worked with conductors including Paavo Järvi, Gianandrea Noseda, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Christopher Warren-Green, Marin Alsop, Christoph Eschenbach, Pietari Inkinen, Vasily Petrenko, Jakub Hrůša, Anu Tali, Xian Zhang, Krzysztof Urbański, Stéphane Denève and Elim Chan.

After finishing his studies at the Academy of Music in Katowice and the Vienna Conservatoire, Lukáš Vondráček obtained an Artist Diploma from Boston’s New England Conservatory under the tutelage of Hung-Kuan Chen, graduating with honours in 2012.

Leoš Čepický

He graduated at the Conservatorium in Pardubice and at the Academy of Music Arts in Prague. He won many international competitions, e.g. in Zagreb (Croatia) and in Gorizia (Italy). He frequently gives solo recitals as well as concerts with orchestras, both in the Czech Republic and also abroad. To celebrate the 250th anniversary of J. S. Bach’s death in 2000 he performed a series of concerts of all Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for violin solo at the Smetana’s Festival in Litomyšl. In 2002 he made a Multisonic solo CD recording of Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas. Since 2007 he works as a professor of violin at the Academy of Music Arts in Prague and in September 2010 he was appointed as a head of a string department of the Academy of Music in Prague. During his studies at AMU he became the first violinist of the Wihan Quartet and he still remains a member of this quartet. As a member of the Wihan Quartet he won the Prague Spring Award in 1988 and also the International Competition of the String Quartets in London in 1991. In 2008 – 2009 the Wihan Quartet performed all 16 Quartets of Ludwig van Beethoven. Leoš Čepický plays a violin from the workshop of violin master Jan B. Špidlen, copy of Guarneri del Gesù from 1741.