Second round jury
The pianist Jacques Ammon, a native of Santiago de Chile, has long lived in Germany. In addition to the concert halls of that country, he has also performed in Austria, France, the Netherlands, Great Britain, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Finland, Poland, Russia, Japan, Chile, Argentina and the USA. He has been half of the “Runge & Ammon” duo with the violoncellist Eckart Runge since 1997. This close cooperation has given rise to five CDs. He has similarly participated in a number albums for Deutsche Grammophon with the violinist Daniel Hope. He also works as a teacher, including as the professor of piano at the University of Music and Theatre Leipzig.
Bartosz Bryla is the leader of a string quartet at the Ignacy Jan Paderewski Academy of Music in Poznan and he also teaches at the Karol Lipiński Academy of Music in Wrocław. He has led violin and chamber music master classes as a visiting professor in Europe, Asia, the USA, Canada, Mexico, the United Arab Emirates and Lebanon. He has been a jury member in a number of competitions, including the Henryk Wieniawski International Violin Competition in Poznan, the Leoš Janáček International Music Competition in Brno, the Carl Flesch International Violin Competition in Hungary and many others. He records for the EMG Victor, Polskie Nagrania, Wifon, Poljazz-Classik, Emscherland Classik and Selene record labels. He has performed the world premieres of Józef Wieniawski’s Violin Sonata and Karol Lipinski’s Violin Concerto no. 1. He is the holder of a number of state awards and he was the Chairman of the Henryk Wieniawski Music Society in 2007–2017. His teachers include Adam Nowak, Wolfgang Marschner and Jadwiga Kaliszewska, while he has also attended classes given by Henryk Szeryng, Nathan Milstein and Yehudi Menuhin.
The renowned oboist Jana Brožková graduated from the Prague Conservatory and the Music Faculty at the Academy of the Performing Arts in Prague. In 1983, she drew attention to herself by winning the Concertino Praga international competition and in 1989 she was the absolute winner and received a special prize at the Europäischer Musikpreis Zürich. She worked for a number of years as the solo oboist at the Czech Radio Symphony Orchestra and she has played first oboe at the Czech Philharmonic since 2002. She also regularly performs as a soloist or as a member of chamber ensembles. She won the prestigious 1st prize in the ARD Munich competition in 1997 with the Afflatus Quintet. She has also been a teacher at the Music Faculty of the Academy of the Performing Arts in Prague since 1999.
Peter Dan Ferenčík is the chief editor in the Music Department at Rádio Devín (Slovak Radio and Television). He has cooperated in the organisation of the Radio_Head Awards, where he has also been a jury member in the Classical Music category, and in a cycle of live broadcasts by the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra. He has participated at the Bratislava Music Festival’s New Talent international performance competition as both an organiser and a presenter. He is the author, dramatic advisor and organiser of Radio Devín’s Resident Ensemble and Resident Artists project which provides support for domestic musicians. He is the initiator of the cooperation between the Academy of the Performing Arts in Bratislava and Slovak Radio and Television in a project focussed on recording the performances of young performers and promoting them. The premieres of his own works have been heard at the Orfeus, SOOZVUK and OPUS NOVA contemporary music festivals, at the New Slovak Music festival and the Ostrava Days of New Music, etc. He has cooperated with Ensemble Ricercata, Ostravská banda, the Mucha Quartet, the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Slovak Philharmonic.
Vladimír Rejlek graduated in playing the trumpet from the Conservatory and the Academy of the Performing Arts in Prague. In 1978, he won the Prague Spring international competition and in 2016 he was the chairman of the jury for the same competition in the trumpet category. He has already been a member of the international jury for the Concertino Praga festival several times. His wide concert repertoire includes works from all stylistic periods and he regularly appears on concert stages both here and abroad. He has been the head of the trumpet group at the Opera Orchestra of the National Theatre in Prague since 1974. In addition to solo concerts, he is also involved in teaching at the Academy of the Performing Arts in Prague, where he was appointed a professor in 2009. His is currently the head of the Wind Instrument Department at the Music and Dance Faculty of the Academy of the Performing Arts in Prague.
The German violoncellist Eckart Runge has received awards from a number of music competitions, such as Premio Stradivari Cremona or International Music Competition Munich. From 1989 to 2019, he was a member of the famous Artemis Quartet, with which he performed at prestigious concert halls all around the world. In 2019, he decided to end his activities in the quartet and to realise projects that combine various musical genres and artistic forms, such as classical music, jazz, pop rock and film music with the aim of reaching a wider audience. He is also involved in teaching and support for youth orchestras. His solo CD from last year received the German Music Critics Award.
The pianist Miroslav Sekera graduated from the Academy of the Performing Arts in Prague. He has received a number of awards both at home and abroad and he received the prize of the “Salon de Virtuosi” in New York in 2016. He has performed as both a solo and chamber player on prestigious stages, especially in Vienna (Wien Konzerthaus, Musikverein), Washington (the Kennedy Center) and in Tokyo (Opera City Concert Hall). In 2019, he performed concerts around Japan with the legendary cellist Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi and he performed as a soloist at the international Karuizawě festival in Japan in the same year. His latest solo CD with works by Franz Liszt and Bedřich Smetana was issued by Supraphon in 2020.