My second year in brief

My second academic year at The Juilliard School of Music in New York, the most prestigious music university in the world, which admits just 5% to 6% of all applicants for studies in every subject in the arts – music, dancing and acting – from all over the globe every year, started in September 2011.

It was nice seeing my school pals and buddies again after the holidays. Most of them have stayed at the dorm, but some of us found our own apartments and live on our own. Three of my schoolmates and I lived some 20 minutes from the school by subway. The second year passed perhaps even quicker than the first one; I believe I did a lot of work and gathered a wealth of memorable experiences.

The academic year started in a really interesting way. A hurricane was raging on the east coast of the US, so no airplanes flew over the Atlantic Ocean for several days. I landed in New York almost one week later than planned, but it was no problem since the first week is intended for the first year students’ orientation, and higher year students are only asked to report that they have arrived. This is also the week for all the of the subject placement tests, based on which students are assigned to classes; given the turmoil, some students never had a chance to take them. We also auditioned for our orchestra role assignments.

Several weeks later, there was the Juilliard Symphony Orchestra concertmaster audition, to which I proceeded thanks to my exam score. I had been registered for my subjects for the fall semester since the previous year, so we just jumped into the rhythm and tempo that we left off at the end of the previous semester. This year, I studied the following subjects: Literature and Theory III – Composition of the 19th Century, focusing on the works of Chopin, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Strauss, Mahler, Wagner, et al.; Music History, covering the history of music from ancient Greece through the middle ages, Baroque, and Bach all the way to the classicist music by Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven; and Arts – a philosophy seminar where we read about the ideas of the great philosophers Kant and Confucius and compared their views with today’s reality. I continued my involvement in the Juilliard Symphony Orchestra and two chamber music ensembles (a piano quartet and a duo).

I was also a member of the “Lab Orchestra” – the practice orchestra for budding conductors – during the fall semester. This orchestra serves both the students of conducting to try and see what it’s like to lead an orchestra, and instrumentalists who can learn about many of the new orchestra pieces that are on repertoire at many of the world’s orchestras. You can also meet excellent guest artists and conductors in this orchestra. Visiting artists to our orchestra included a concertmaster from the Berlin Philharmonic, members and soloists of the New York Philharmonic, the Royal London Philharmonic, and many others.

I have some amazing lessons in my major – violin, with Professor Glenn Dicterow, concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic. Glenn Dicterow has played with globally renowned orchestras on a regular basis since he was eleven. He studied with violin legends such as Jascha Heifetz, Nathan Milstein and Henryk Szeryng. He has been a New York Philharmonic concertmaster since 1980 and performs as a soloist with the orchestra every year. During his lifetime, he has worked with famed conductors including Kurt Masur, Zubin Mehta, Claudio Abbado, Lorin Maazel, Ricardo Mutti, and Leonard Bernstein for whom he also recorded several movie soundtracks. He has also focused on chamber music all his life, and on teaching at the Juilliard School of Music and the Manhattan School of Music throughout his tenure with the New York Philharmonic. He teaches both the violin as a major and orchestra parts at both schools. Glenn Dicterow has collected a lot of (not just) musical experience, and I have the opportunity to learn from him. I work with him every week and it’s getting better all the time, almost unreal sometimes… He requires a new repertoire for every lesson – we rarely work on the same composition twice. For me, this means remembering a maximum of what he’s saying and showing me on the violin, and working with full concentration. I have to say that he is very demanding and strict, yet he is fun to be around and we have a great time.

Alan Gilbert, Chief Conductor and Music Director of the New York Philharmonic, took over the baton for the school orchestra this year. Alan Gilbert has been the Chief Conductor and Music Director of the New York Philharmonic for three years. Even though both of his parents are with the New York Philharmonic – both his mother and father are violinists – Alan Gilbert never took anything for granted since the beginnings of his career, and he is an example of someone who has worked his way all the way up to the top. Alan Gilbert graduated from the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and The Juilliard School of Music in New York and holds a PhD. from Harvard University. He started as an assistant to the chief conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra, became the chief conductor of the Royal Stockholm Orchestra in 2000, and has worked with the Santa Fe Opera Orchestra on an ongoing basis for 20 years. He was appointed the Chief Conductor of the New York Philharmonic in 2007. He is a model for all students in the sense that if you work hard and have a little luck, you can do anything. Alan Gilbert is also the first holder of the William Schuman Chair at The Juilliard School of Music. Based on my exam results, I was included in his concert cycle. Working with someone who has been as successful as Alan Gilbert is an incredible experience. The fact that he became the conductor of the Juilliard Symphony Orchestra has brought many globally renowned guest artists who performed with the New York Philharmonic to our school.

This year, we worked with the legendary conductors Kurt Masur and Bernard Haitink as well as pianists Jeffrey Kahane and Jeremy Denk. We also had an opportunity to work with players from the Berlin Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic, the London Symphony Orchestra and many others. It was incredible having the opportunity to work with them and hear their opinions. This is what makes our school so special. We played the concert with Alan Gilbert in March, just before spring vacation. Following two weeks of intensive rehearsals, we played Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring and Ravel’s Le tombeau de Couperin. Performing on stage at the New York Philharmonic’s Avery Fisher Hall with a musician and conductor as excellent as Alan Gilbert was an unforgettable experience. In just two weeks, he brought the entire orchestra to an entirely different level.

I also started working at the school’s official recording studio, tracking concertos and other recitals in the evening. It’s very nice; I get to hear many of my colleagues without having to pay my admission – in fact I get paid, and I have learned to work with recording equipment.

I was involved in two chamber efforts in the first semester. The piano quartet was one of them, with Joseph Kalichstein as our coach. Joseph Kalichstein is one of the most prominent pianists in the US. While he was born in Israel, Joseph Kalichstein has spent his entire artistic life in the USA. He graduated in piano from The Juilliard School of Music. He has worked with artists such as Leonard Bernstein, George Szell, Andre Previn, Daniel Barenboim, Pierre Boulez, Zubin Mehta and many others. In 1977, he and his piano trio played at the official inauguration of President Jimmy Carter. We worked with him on Brahms’ Piano Quartet, which we performed at the Williams Residence Hall at the end of the semester. Every coaching lesson was very intensive and special. Despite being a pianist first and foremost, Joseph Kalichstein didn’t just focus on the piano in our group, as many pianists would do – he offered advice to all of the group members: me as the primarius, the viola player and the cello player as well. He was trying to help us musically, given how difficult a piece Brahms’ Piano Quartet is. His comments always pointed to the core musical idea – he never picked on details. I worked with him on Dvořák’s Piano Quintet in the second semester, with the second violin added to our ensemble. It was wonderful seeing how Joseph Kalichstein loves Antonín Dvořák’s purely Czech music; what a valuable treasure he holds it to be. My colleagues in the studio piano trio and I should work with him again in the next academic year.

The other chamber ensemble that I played with in the first semester was a duo – a violin and a piano. I worked with my schoolmate and excellent pianist Suejin Jung. We didn’t have an official coach, and we worked with our major teachers – Glenn Dicterow and Matti Raekallio. We worked together on Beethoven’s and Brahms’ violin sonatas and various virtuoso pieces, which we recorded for a CD in the school’s recording studio at the end of the semester.

My other chamber ensemble was a string – or “cello” – quintet in the other semester. Nicholas Mann was our coach. He’s an excellent violinist and teacher. We worked on Schubert’s quintet, which is considered to be one of the best chamber pieces ever. We enjoyed working with the quintet a lot and performing the piece live was a great experience. You get to try out what’s it like being onstage for more than an hour without interruption.

I completed my fall semester before Christmas; we took many tests and exams during the last weeks of the semester, and our teachers then calculated our percentage ratings and final grades from the results. Just before Christmas, I was included in an orchestra concert series led by conductor Larry Rachlef, head of the conducting department at Rice University in Houston. The series was not long; the rehearsals took just about ten days, but there were many of them and they were intense. The concert was a huge success; it was one of the best concerts that the Juilliard Symphony Orchestra has ever played, and we even did an encore – a very rare occurrence at the Juilliard Orchestra performances. The concert was also wonderfully received in a New York Times review.

In addition to this, I was making a DVD recording to audition for the Queen Elisabeth Violin Competition, the most famous violin contest in the world. It involved a huge amount of repertoire, which I prepared along with Mr. Glenn Dicterow and recorded in the school’s state-of-the-art recording studio. Direct enrolment in the competition has been an incredible personal and professional success for me. Juilliard helped me a lot in this respect. The competition takes place at the same time as all of the final exams at the school, and I was in Brussels the whole time. Juilliard allowed me to take almost all my exams before I left; all I have left to do at the beginning of the next fall semester are my Music History exams.

The spring semester kicked off right after the Christmas holidays, and it started all over again. This semester I did my research on the topic of interpreting Beethoven’s violin sonatas. It was intriguing to study the views and observations of major artists past and present. We worked on the assignment together with a doctor of arts and literature who regularly contributes articles to the New York Times and blogs of other major dailies and magazines. He taught us step by step to efficiently use our knowledge and research technical literature. Once we had enough material collected, he taught us to use it correctly, to connect ideas and to efficiently lead the reader to our final idea on the matter. I was also included in The Juilliard Orchestra concert series with conductor Emmanuel Vuillaume for this semester. The French conductor led us through performing Wagner’s Prelude to Lohengrin, Berlioz’s Les Nuits d’été and Eine Alpensinfonie by Richard Strauss, again at the New York Philharmonic’s Avery Fisher Hall. It was a great concert that reaped an excellent review in the New York Times. I prepared for the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels with my professor throughout the second semester.

My brother and I flew to Santa Fe, New Mexico for spring holidays to play a recital and teach and participate in a student concert as volunteers at the New Mexico School of Arts. It was a really nice holiday and a joy to see people who really love music and children who are grateful for advice and help. I hope that we’ll be lucky enough to go there again next year.

I flew to the Queen Elizabeth Competition in Brussels at the end of April. It was an incredible success for me, both professionally and personally. I proceeded to the second round of the competition whose winners include both legends and rising stars of the violin, such as David Oistrakh, Leonid Kogan, Jamie Laredo, Vadim Repin, Nikolai Zneider, Sergey Khachatryan and Ray Chen. The overall atmosphere of the competition and the people who come to see and listen to the contestants make for a great and unforgettable experience. Most participants stayed with host families that took care of us throughout the competition. The host families are people who are really interested in the developments during the competition and support “their” contestant. All of Brussels simply lived the competition, although it is home to many important organizations of the European Union. TV and radio crews were in attendance, and the competition was also broadcast live on the Internet. We received all required documents and were introduced to our accompanist, who was to guide us throughout the competition, at the opening ceremony. Also, the jury was introduced to us, and there was a draw to determine the order of competitors. The first round took one week; we played from three to seven and then from eight to eleven thirty PM every day. The entire competition took more than one month. The audience was not just the jury and the competitors’ friends; there were many people from Brussels who, while not professional musicians, are classical music enthusiasts, and they were fantastic. When I was on stage, the audience was dead quiet, as everybody focused on the contestants’ performances. The repertoire included everything a violinist can imagine; from Bach’s solo violin sonatas to Mozart’s concerto to a Romantic sonata to your own 60-minute recital to two pieces written especially for the Queen Elizabeth Competition 2012 to the final concert, which was optional. Unfortunately, I didn’t make it to the finals so I didn’t get the chance to play Bartok’s violin concerto with the National Orchestra of Belgium, but I treasure this experience and hope to put it to use in the future. My teacher Mr. Glenn Dicterow was very satisfied with my brothers’ and my performances and told us that the most important thing is to never stop improving and that the most useful thing about competitions is the time spent practicing beforehand; once the contest starts, it’s all about one’s performance in the moment and luck.

In January, I auditioned for one of the most prestigious summer music academies in the USA, the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, California. Out of hundreds of applicants, I was admitted with a full grant to the violin class led by Kathleen Winkler of Rice University in Houston. Aside from violin, the program offers orchestra playing led by conductors L. Rachleff, Y. P. Tortelier, and A. Lazarev, chamber playing – the Miro Quartet, opera, and many master classes and concerts, which this year will feature artists such as Kiri Te Kanawa, Gil Shaham, Miriam Fried, Cho-Liang Lin, Glenn Dicterow, Kathleen Dreyfus and others. I was lucky to take lessons with Gil Shaham and Miriam Fried. I consider my admission to this summer academy another of my professional successes; 8 weeks of intensive study in such an exceptional environment and with such great artists offer a unique opportunity to gain a lot of information, inspiration and experience. The program also offers teaching activities that help in developing the skills and artistic imagination of little children in Santa Barbara. The families in and around the town whose children are amateur musicians can take lessons with the academy students for two weeks. It’s a great opportunity to pass on insights and experience and, most importantly, share the love of music. After those eight weeks, I will have two more weeks of holidays that I will probably spend back in the Czech Republic, and then our next academic year 2012-2013 will start. I hope it will be as professionally inspiring and successful as this year was, and that I will be lucky enough to meet the right people.

I thank The Kellner Family Foundation for their exceptional support of my studies. I appreciate it deeply!