THE PRAZAK String Quartet return to Leamington later this month.
They will close the annual Investec International String Quartet Concerts season at the Pump Rooms on Friday March 20.
The Prague quartet was last in town for the 2018 Leamington Music Festival, when they gave two concerts. Its leader, Jana Vonášková-Nováková, was already well known as she had performed in the town several times before in violin and piano recitals and with the Smetana Piano Trio.
This concert will feature one of the last quartets written by Haydn, two works by Dvořák and the world première of Karel Janovicky’s Quartet No 4, which is dedicated to the Prazak Quartet.
Janovicky, who recently celebrated his 90th birthday, was born in Pilsen but has lived in London for nearly 70 years. He has worked for the BBC as well as being a prolific composer. He has visited Leamington during festivals of Czech music put on in the Pump Rooms.
Festival director Richard Phillips said: “I am delighted that the Pražák Quartet is coming back and that our wonderful links with the Czechs continue.
“Our concerts take place in the Assembly Hall of the Royal Pump Rooms where the Czech Free Army Choir used to rehearse during the Second World War when the soldiers were based in Leamington. We will again have Czech musicians coming to our Festival in early May, plus members of the Dvorak Society, enthusiasts for Czech music, who come from all over the UK.
“We have had a wonderful season of string quartet concerts, with visiting quartets from Korea, the Czech Republic and France as well as two British-based quartets notable because they play on gut strings and concentrate on the classical and early romantic period only.”
* The final concert in the Leamington Music Winter Season is on March 24 in Warwick’s St Mary’s Church, when the four singers of the Orlando Consort give their programme Guillaume de Machaut: Portrait of a Genius.
Visit www.leamingtonmusic.org for tickets and further details.
