The pianist Martin Kasik beyond the reach of ordinary mortals.

You have won a large number of prizes from competitions or from various foundations. Which of them do you value most? Do some of the competitions stick in your memory more than others?

Of course every competition is a very much an adrenalin affair and so you don't forget them. Probably the one I remember best is the Prague Spring 1998, because competing on hot domestic ground is always the toughest.

If I'm not mistaken, you were 22 at the time. In which phase of your music studies were you back then?

I was in the first year of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague with Prof. Ivan Klansky. I'm glad that I managed such a good take-off, especially when in the first half of the year I was going through a crisis--the transition from the conservatory method of teaching to the academy method probably gives every student problems.

You have taken many music courses in the Czech Republic and abroad led by various interesting people like Lazar Berman, Eugen Indjic, Christian Zacharias, Paul Badura--Skoda, Claude Helffer and others. Do you have any favourite among them, someone who gave you something more?

For me the most beneficial was the summer spent in Marlboro (Vermont), where they hold meetings with chamber music. Playing with people from the Guarneri Quartet or the Beaux Arts Trio was a vast stimulus for me and a long-term inspiration.

Your name is usually followed immediately by the title, "winner of the Young Concert Artists Competition N.Y.1999". Could you say something about the course of the competition and how your success there has influenced your career?

Young Concert Artists is an organisation based in New York, which has been supporting young musicians for 45 years. It is actually a music agency that chooses musicians from all branches of classical music (including chamber ensembles, composers and singers) on the basis of a competition that it organises every year. Especially in the USA, YCA enjoys huge popularity and is extraordinarily successful in promoting its young artists. When you win the classical piano competition you get a diploma, money and a few concerts, and that is certainly very encouraging and raises your prestige, but it still doesn't necessarily mean so much for your future. After winning in the YCA your co-operation with the agency is just beginning. Usually you get a 3-5 year contract, which includes concerts in the Carnegie Hall in New York or the Kennedy Centre in Washington, for example, which is usually beyond the reach of ordinary mortals.

When you have the chance to play in such prestigious concert halls can you choose your own repertoire?

In choosing recital programmes I usually have a free hand, and I try to play as much Czech music as possible, especially 20th century--Janacek, Martinu, Slavicky, Fiser and so on. As far as concerts with orchestra are concerned it's usually the organiser, who has his own idea of the programme for the whole season or festival.

You made your debut with the Czech Philharmonic in 2002 and then went with this orchestra on a tour of Japan with the conductor Ken-Ichiro Kobayashi and also concerts in Taiwan, also with the Czech Philharmonic and the conductor Zdenek Macal. How did you find working with them?

Working with the Czech Philharmonic is every musician's dream. I see every concert with them as a great occasion and try to give it my best. With Macal I had the chance to play the Dvorak's piano concerto and I must say that I have rarely felt so sure and so inspired on the podium.

The music agency Arco Diva is working on an interesting project to mark the publication of a new critical edition of Janacek's 2nd String Quartet (in co-production with ProQuartet France and Barenreiter Prague) in May 2006. This is a performance of Janacek's song cycle, The Diary of One Who Disappeared with the singers Jaroslav Brezina and Veronika Hajnova and with you playing as well. What is the place of chamber music in your repertoire? After all, most of your concert work is solo ...

For me chamber music is something refreshing and different, and recently I've been doing more of it. I very much enjoy playing with brilliant musicians and ensembles, whether the Wihan, Panoch or Stamic Quartets or the Afflatus Quintet, and I look forward to working with the violinist Ivan Zenaty and the cellist Jiri Barta. It's nice to create something together.

Which piece or, more generally composer do you most like playing?

It's very hard to answer that question. There is something unique and fascinating about every great composer which makes it impossible to compare him with the others. But if I really had to choose one, it would be Janacek--with his great knowledge of human psychology, his music is really "thrust deep into blood and life" as he himself wished.

When you give an encore after a successful concert, do you play something that makes you happy or do you tend to choose something more with a view to the audience?

I don't prepare encores, and I just play what I'm in the mood for, I most enjoy doing the Toccata by Klement Slavicky as an encore--it's a very spectacular piece but at the same time richly expressive.

What is your attitude to contemporary classical music?

I would say it was the same as my attitude to every other. With the difference that in the case of music of the Romantic period, for example, I dare make a judgment on what is good and what bad, whereas with contemporary music I can only say I like it or I don't like it. I don't have enough of an overview and distance, in terms of time, to judge it more objectively. I'm aware that I am at a particular stage of development and I will definitely understand certain things later on, and so it would be stupid to condemn them now.

I sense a little scepticism in your answer ... Do you sometimes have the feeling that contemporary music is developing in a wrong direction?

Contemporary music is certainly developing in the direction that it has to develop in, and I think that a true master writes out of a need to write and cannot concentrate primarily on how the audience are going to react to a piece. From history we know innumerable cases of composers and pieces of genius being denounced and forgotten. Today we glorify them. Were they ahead of their time? Did they speak in an unknown language? Did they not fit in with the taste of their period? There can certainly be plenty of reasons, and so we ought to be cautious in our judgments, even though we ought to know how to recognise a "fraud"--music that is in no respect up to scratch. Of course it is very difficult. In any case, a real composer has to know how to resign himself to lack of success.

Do you have feeling for the musical joke or experiment?

I hope so. How could anyone play Haydn, Mozart or a composer like Martinu, for example, without a sense of humour and some insight into improvisation?

What is the difference for you when you play a completely new piece, one never performed before? Do you find it particularly exciting or do you have an increased sense of responsibility?

It's both a privilege and a responsibility. You have far greater freedom of interpretation but at the same time you feel that your interpretation ought to take the most ideal form.

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On one of your seven CDs you brought to life Lubos Fiser's 8th Piano Sonata. How did you come across this piece?

I was handed the sonata by my manager Jiri Stilec. He and his wife Sylvie Bodorova were close friends of Lubos Fiser. It is one of his last works, very contemplative and condensed in expression. While working on this piece I realised how much more enriching it was to read a piece from the manuscript.

Are you planning another new departure or premiere of a piece by a contemporary composer?

As far as the most up-to-the-minute music is concerned, I'm very much looking forward to the piano concerto that Sylvie Bodorova is just writing for me and that I shall perform with the Prague Chamber Philharmonic and Jiri Belohlavek in Prague at the end of February next year (I haven't yet played any 21st-century music ...)

Martin Kasik

born in 1976 in Frenstat pod Radhostem, has been playing the piano since the age of 4. He studied at the Conservatory in Ostrava (with Prof. Monika Tugendliebova) and the Music Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (with Prof. Ivan Klansky). He is a regular participant in Czech and international piano courses (Paris, Villecroze, Piestany, Ceske Budejovice, Ostrava) led by Lazar Berman, Eugen Indjic, Christian Zacharias, Paul Badura--Skoda, Claude Helffer and Pierre Jasmin. He has won a series of prizes in Czech and international competitions:

1994

International Piano Competition in Kil, Sweden--1st Prize

1997

International Frederick Chopin Competition in Marianske Lazne--1st Prize

1998

International Piano Competition of the Prague Spring--1st Prize

Prague Spring Foundation Prize for the Best Recital (2nd Round)

Life to Artists Foundation Prize at Intergram Gideon Klein Foundation Prize

Czech Music Fund Foundation Prize

Music Academy Prize in Villecroz (France)

Czech Radio Prize

Young Concert Artists Competition--European Round--Leipzig--1st Prize

Barenreiter Publishing House Prize

1999

Young Concert Artists Competition--Worldwide Round--New York--1st Prize

Pasadena Philharmonic Prize

Beracassa Foundation Prize

He has given concerts in many European states--Holland (Concertgebouw Amsterdam, De doelen Rotterdam), Finland (Finlandia Hall Helsinki), Spain (Auditorio di Barcelona), Germany, Estonia, France, Switzerland, Sweden, Poland (Duszniky Chopin Festival), Slovakia, and also in the USA (Alice Tully Hall New York, Metropolitan Museum NY, Kennedy Centre Washington and elsewhere), Japan (Tokyo Suntory Hall) and Singapore (Singapore Victoria Concert Hall). He has performed as a soloists with a series of Czech and foreign orchestras (New York Chamber Orchestra, Minnesota Symphony Orchestra, Singapore Philharmonic, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Deutsche Radio Berlin, Helsinki Philharmonic, Prague Symphony Orchestra FOK, Utah Philharmonic, Slovak Philharmonic, Czech Radio Symphony Orchestra, Janacek Philharmonic Ostrava, and others). In April 2002 he made his debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Pinchas Zukerman.

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Thanks to his art he was included in a series of concerts devoted to the 40th anniversary of the founding of the New York Young Concert Artists competition, and on the 15th of February he appeared in the prestigious concert series of the Metropolitan Museum in New York. In November 2002 he made his debut with the Czech Philharmonic. This debut was followed up by three concerts as part of the Czech Philharmonic's tour of Japan (Tokyo Suntory Hall and elsewhere). In 2003 he first performed in the TheRtre du ChRtelet in Paris and in the Tonhalle Zurich. In the 2004/2005 season he toured with the Czech Philharmonic in Japan (conductor Ken-Ichiro Kobayashi) and also concerts in Taiwan (also with the Czech Philharmonic, conductor Zdenek Macal), in the USA (Prague Symphony Orchestra FOK), Switzerland (Settimane musicali di Ascona, with the Prague Chamber Philharmonic), Estonia, Germany, Mallorca (Frederik Chopin Int. Festival) and at international music festivals in the Czech Republic.

For the 2005 / 2006 season he has concerts planned in Switzerland (Tonhalle Zurich), USA (Metropolitan Museum NY), France (Festival at Fontainebleau), Great Britain, Spain and Germany.

He has several times recorded for Czech, German, Swedish and Missouri radio and for Czech Television. He has recorded a total of 7 CDs of works by J. S. Bach, L. van Beethoven, F. Chopin, R. Schumann, S. Rachmaninov and Klement Slavicky. The CD "Martin Kasik--Live from Prague" with music by Schumann and Rachmaninov received an outstanding review in the French music magazine Repertoire in January 2000, in which Kasik's interpretation of Schumann's Kreisleriana was compared to the performances of M. Argerich or V. Horowitz. In December 2000 his second solo CD was released, entitled "Allegro barbaro" with works by K. Slavicky, L. Fiser (world premiere), B. Bartok and L. Janacek. In April 2002 another of his solo recordings was released, "Martin Kasik--CHOPIN", which was also awarded an R9 in the magazine Repertoire.

In 2003 another compact disc was released in co-operation with the Wihan Quartet--"Schumann/Dvorak--Piano Quintets" followed by a complete recording of Dvorak's Slavonic Dances with Kristina Krkavcova in 2004.

Martin Kasik is the holder of the Davidoff Prix 2000 prize for the best Czech performer younger than 28 years of age for classical music and the Harmonie Prize as the most successful young artist for the year 2002.