Jana Vlachová

The daughter, master student, and successor of the great Czech violinist Josef Vlach was initiated into the sublime art of quartet playing in her early childhood. At fourteen, as part of a string quartet directed and taught by her father, she received the first prize in the international competition Concertino Praga. At fifteen—in advance of the usual age for entrance—she began studying violin with Prof. Marie Hlounová at Academy of Fine Arts (AMU) in Prague; soon she was appearing as a soloist; at seventeen she played Ernest Chausson’s Poème in a concert broadcast live on the radio; she toured, performed concerts in Czechoslovakia, in Scandinavia, in Germany, Hungary, and Russia; gradually she mastered the standard repertoire for violin and piano.

Chamber music has always been her special love. Together with the cellist Mikael Ericsson, her husband, she performs the rare and precious literature for violin and cello, including works by Ravel, Honegger, and Martinů that she has recorded for CD but also new works by Viktor Kalabis, Ondrej Kukal, and Zdenek Lukás that was composed especially for Jana Vlachová and Mikael Ericsson and dedicated to these two great performers. Naturally double concertos for violin and cello are often on their programs, including the famous one by Brahms and the little known one by Josef Rejcha. Together with Mikael Ericsson, the violinist Karel Stadtherr, and, since 2006, the violist Georg Haag, Jana Vlachová has been performing in the Vlach Quartet Prague that she founded as both a new group and as a revival, for a Vlach Quartet had existed before, until 1975, the legendary ensemble of her father and role model, Josef Vlach. With her own string quartet, which has now been successfully active for 25 years, Jana Vlachová performs the masterpieces of the Classical composers as well as nationalist, Romantic, modern Czech music. In 1995 the Vlach Quartet Prague began a project recording for Naxos the complete chamber music of Antonín Dvořák.

As concert master and artistic director of the Czech Chamber Orchestra, Vlachová represents the great tradition of music-making established by her father. In 2000 she toured with the orchestra in Spain and performed the solo part in the violin concertos of Johann Sebastian Bach. In summer courses and master classes in Europe, the United States, and Japan the violinist passes on her musical and technical knowledge to a new generation of musicians.