Celebratory Concert in the Rudolfinum to Round Out the Celebrations of the 75th Anniversary of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague

A Celebratory Concert will be held in Prague on Friday, 8 October 2021 to mark 75 years of the existence of the Academy of Performing Arts. The students, teachers and graduates of AMU’s Music and Dance Faculty will take the stage in the Dvořák Hall of Prague’s Rudolfinum. The concert will feature pieces by Antonín Dvořák and Bedřich Smetana and will be broadcast live on ČT art.

The event is being organised by the Music and Dance Faculty of AMU (HAMU) under the baton of Leoš Svárovský, a HAMU graduate and teacher and will feature the Academic Anniversary Orchestra 2021 involving the current students, teachers and graduates of HAMU. The programme consists of Antonín Dvořák’s Concerto in A Minor Op. 53 for Violin and Orchestra and selections from Bedřich Smetana’s My Country – Vltava, From Bohemia's Meadows and Groves, and Šárka. The featured soloist will be the violin virtuoso Jan Mráček, Czech Philharmonic Concert Master and a HAMU student. With a live broadcast courtesy of ČT art, both listeners in Rudolfinum’s Dvořák Hall and TV viewers will have an opportunity to enjoy the celebratory concert.

Conductor Leoš Svárovský says: “It is a great joy and honour for me to have been appointed by the AMU headquarters to conduct the Celebratory Concert on the occasion of our school’s 75th anniversary. The concert will feature Jan Mráček, an excellent Czech violinist and my friend of many years, as the soloist. The entire concert programme is truly presentational: Antonín Dvořák’s Violin and Orchestra Concerto is a genuine gem in the repertoire for violin and orchestra, and will be followed by three parts selected from Bedřich Smetana’s My Country. The selections are my personal choice, and you can rest assured that I considered them very carefully, since the entire My Country is close to the heart of any Czech orchestra conductor and all of its parts are exceptional.”

The Celebratory Concert is the culmination of the celebrations of the 75 years of existence of the Czech Republic’s largest tertiary art school. Held during the academic year 2020/2021, the festivities include an extensive programme, which has unfortunately been affected by the coronavirus pandemic: in addition to 75 well-wishing videos from AMU’s current students, teachers, employees and prominent graduates, an exhibition mapping the history of AMU as a whole is available for viewing at the Kampa park from 24 June to 29 August 2021.

Tickets to the Celebratory Concert will be on sale at the Rudolfinum box office from 2 August 2021.

More information on AMU’s 75th anniversary is available here.