ArtLink Festival’s Opening Concert with RTS Symphony Orchestra, Agata Szymczewska, violin, Poland and Lukáš Pohůnek, conductor, Slovakia

Winner of the 2006 Henryk Wieniawski International Violin Competition in Poznań, Agata Szymczewska has since won a number of other prestigious awards. She was also the first to receive the London Music Masters Award by a committee composed of members of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Wigmore Hall and the Royal College of Music.

In October 2009, Szymczewska made her debut at Wigmore Hall, following which she received an invitation to play at the Royal Festival Hall with the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Osmo Vanska in autumn 2010.

She has performed across Europe in addition to Israel, Canada, China, Korea and Japan, appearing with orchestras including Sinfonia Varsovia, Warsaw Philharmonic (the National Philharmonic Orchestra of Poland), National Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Lahti Symphony Orchestra, Vilnius State Symphony Orchestra, and Russian Philharmonic. She has collaborated with outstanding conductors including Krzysztof Penderecki, Andrey Boreyko, Moshe Atzmon, Dmitri Liss, Saulius Sondeckis, Antoni Wit, Maxim Vengerov and Jerzy Maksymiuk.

Szymczewska is also a very active chamber musician. Every year since 2005, she has taken part in the prestigious International Music Academy Switzerland founded by Maestro Seiji Ozawa. In 2005, she toured Japan and China with Maestro Seiji Ozawa as the youngest member and concertmaster of Ongaku-juku Orchestra. In 2010 she took part in the Kronberg Academy’s „Chamber Music Connects the World” Festival, where she had the chance to play with Gidon Kremer, Yuri Bashmet and Franz Helmerson.

Her discography includes performances with Krystian Zimerman, Kaja Danczowska, Ryszard Groblewski and Rafał Kwiatkowski of Grażyna Bacewicz’s Piano Quintets to commemorate the centenary of the composer’s birth. In October 2010, Szymczewska recorded the violin concertos of Bruch and Mendelssohn and Wieniawski’s Legend.

She plays an Antonio Stradivarius violin (Cremona, ca. 1680) on loan from Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben.

As the last European student of Maestro Kurt Masur, Lukáš Pohůnek is one of the rising conductors of his generation. He has already developed a strong guest-conducting profile and has performed with many top-leading orchestras. He collaborated with MSM Symphony Orchestra New York and Leipziger Symphonieorchester – with later one he made his debut-performance at Gewandhaus in Leipzig. He is permanent guest conductor of Slovak Sinfonietta Žilina, Slovak State Philharmonic Orchestra Košice and Polish State Philharmonic Orchestra Zielona Góra. He has also served as an assistant conductor at Slovak National Theatre in Bratislava. In 2016 he will make his debut with Romanian State Philharmonic Orchestra „Oltenia“ in Craiova and then in 2018 with Slovak Philharmonic in Bratislava.

Lukáš comes from a family of professional musicians. Before his conducting studies, he graduated Žilina Conservatory with a degree in trumpet performance (under the supervision of his father Ján Pohůnek). He further achieved his education in Orchestral conducting at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague with Leos Swarovski and the Academy of Music in Cracow with Tadeusz Strugała and Rafał Delekta. During his university studies, Lukáš has also participated in classes at Accademia Musicale Chigiana with Gianluigi Gelmetti, at Lovro von Matačić Foundation with Colin Metters, at Royal Northern College Manchester with Mark Heron, at Cracow’s Academy of Music with Alexander Liebreich and in The Art of Conducting seminar with George Pehlivanian. He served also as an assistant to Oliver von Dohnányi and was awarded scholarships of Dvořák Society in London and Olga Havel Foundation in Prague.

In 2015 Lukáš participated in Kurt Masur Conducting Seminar at Manhattan School of Music in New York and was later on personally invited by Maestro Masur to take part in the annual Mendelssohn Academy Leipzig as the first-ever European conductor in this regular event, organized by Mendelssohn Foundation and Mendelssohn House Leipzig.

Other European concert engagements include appearances with Janáček Philharmonic Orchestra Ostrava, Catalonia Youth Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Orquestra de Cadaqués, North-Czech Philharmonic Orchestra Teplice, Penderecki’s Beethoven Academy Orchestra Cracow, Croatian Chamber Orchestra Zagreb, Orchestra della Fondazione Bulgaria Classic Siena, Academic Chamber Soloists Prague and Moravian Sinfonietta Ostrava. As a solo-trumpet-player, he performed with Slovak Philharmonic, Bohuslav Martinů Philharmonic Zlín, Bratislava Conservatory Symphony Orchestra, Janáček Philharmonic Ostrava and Slovak Sinfonietta Žilina.

The ensembles of the Musical Production of the Radio-television of Serbia – it’s Symphonic Orchestra (1937) and Choir (1938) – have been active for over 70 years, and constitute a pillar of the musical activities of radio and television in Serbia. The ensembles have well-developed concert activities and their carefully conceived and engaged work, performances in Belgrade, throughout Serbia, and abroad, have contributed to the quality of musical life, cultivating Serbian musical heritage in particular. Alongside major established visiting conductors, the ensembles have been led, in the capacity of chief conductor, by some of the most prominent artists including Mihajlo Vukdragović and Milan Bajšanski, the Orchestra’s and Choir’s first conductors, and then by Stevan Hristić, Krešimir Baranović, Borivoje Simić, Mladen Jagušt, Vančo Čavdarski, Vladimir Kranjčević, Milen Načev, and David Porcelijn. Since 2005, Bojan Suđić – who began his career precisely by working with the Choir and the Symphonic Orchestra of the RTS, in 1985 and 1989, respectively – has been the artistic director and chief conductor of both ensembles. The ensembles have performed at every major festival in Yugoslavia and Serbia, and toured, with much success, England, Italy, France, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Greece, Russia, Romania, Morocco, Montenegro, and Croatia.

In addition to producing archive recordings of their concert performances, whose programmes are usually conceived with that purpose in mind, the orchestra has produced a large number of studio recordings, most of which feature works by national authors (Yugoslav and Serbian) and pieces of contemporary music with domestic soloists. Over the years, the programming objectives of their work have not changed significantly: quality (usually première) performances and recordings of domestic music (both historical and contemporary), première performances of those works from the international musical canon that are underrepresented on the Serbian concert stage, especially monumental vocal-instrumental, symphonic, and a cappella works. This trajectory of achieving the highest professional standards in performance and the realisation of inspired original creations have incorporated projects realised over the past ten years under the artistic leadership of maestro Bojan Suđić.

In addition to establishing concert seasons and frequent performances of the principal works of the international musical heritage, the ensembles have retained their focus on interpreting and recording works by Serbian composers, such as Vasilije Mokranjac, Ljubica Marić, Konstantin Babić, Vladan Radovanović, Rajko Maksimović, Dejan Despić, Vlastimir Trajković, Milan Mihajlović, Ivan Jevtić, Zoran Erić, Jugoslav Bošnjak, Rastislav Kambasković, Vera Milanković, Svetislav Božić, Isidora Žebeljan, Ivan Brkljačić, Aleksandar Simić, Aleksandar Sedlar, Zoran Mulić, and many others, as well as Serbian music classics, such as Kornelije Stanković, Stevan Mokranjac – to whom the ensembles paid special attention to the occasion of the centenary of his death in 2014, Petar Konjović, Stevan Hristić, Marko Tajčević, and others.