Brno Philharmonic Orchestra

The orchestra regularly records for the Czech Radio, Czech Television and a number of music labels (including Supraphon, Sony Music, IMG Records, BMG and Channel 4), and in 2020 founded its own label, Filharmonie Brno. It is also receiving a growing number of commissions from global clientele through the agency Czech Orchestra Recordings. 

Throughout its history, the orchestra has had a number of Czech and international conductors, including Břetislav Bakala, František Jílek, Petr Altrichter, Jiří Bělohlávek, Sir Charles Mackerras, Jakub Hrůša or Tomáš Netopil. Maestro Dennis Russell Davies has been appointed the orchestra’s new chief conductor and artistic director beginning with the 2018/2019 season. 

Since 2000 the Filharmonie Brno has been organising the open-air summer festival at the Špilberk castle in Brno, and in 2012 has become the organiser of the renowned traditional festivals Moravian Autumn, Easter Festival of Sacred Music and Exposition of New Music. The orchestra sponsors the internationally lauded children’s choir Kantiléna, has been involved since 2010 in the young musicians’ festival Mozart’s Children, and in 2014 founded the Filharmonie Brno Orchestra Academy. 

Today Filharmonie Brno is not only a strong player in the field of symphonic music at home and abroad, but also the primary organiser of the musical season in the second largest Czech city, an active instigator of festivals and a creative leader in orchestral programming. 

Its home is the beautiful Besední dům (former civic house), the Brno counterpart to Vienna’s Musikverein, built in 1873 according to a design by Theophil Hansen, though the orchestra is now looking forward to its new modern concert hall, which is being designed by a team of Tomasz Konior, Petr Hrůša and acoustician Yasuhisa Toyota. 

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Recent opera engagements include a new production of Peter Eötvös’ Tri sestry in Frankfurt and multiple performances of Salome and Wozzeck at the Vienna State Opera. He has conducted new productions at the Bayreuth and Salzburg Festivals, the Metropolitan Opera New York, the Hamburg and Bavarian State Operas, the Opera National de Paris, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, and Teatro Real Madrid – a total of more than 140 new productions by many of the theatre world’s most important stage directors. 

Dennis Russell Davies’ rich discography includes complete recordings of the symphonies of Bruckner and Philip Glass (Bruckner Orchester Linz), Haydn (Stuttgarter Kammerorchester), and Arthur Honegger (Sinfonieorchester Basel). With his wife and duo partner Maki Namekawa he has recorded extensively, including works by Mozart, Beethoven, Shostakovich, Philip Glass, and Stravinsky (original four-hand versions of Le Sacre de printemps, Firebird, and Petrouchka).   

Dennis Russell Davies is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has been awarded the German Bundesverdienstkreuz, the Austrian Ehrenkreuz für Wissenschaft und Kunst, as well as the title Commandeur des Arts et Lettres bestowed by the French Government.  

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Laura can already look back on a number of exceptional achievements to date, among them being the winner of the BBC Young Musician competition aged 15. Her 2018 debut album 1948 won the 2018 Edison Klassiek Award and the 2019 BBC Music Magazine Newcomer of the Year Award. The disc, featuring Russian music for cello and piano with pianist Petr Limonov, has been hailed as a “a thought-provoking debut disc from an impressive and intelligent young cellist” (Gramophone).

Also a passionate chamber musician, Laura has collaborated with the likes of Tom Poster, Katya Apekisheva, Matthew MacDonald, Jâms Coleman and Max Baillie, and has given recitals at the Wigmore Hall, West Cork and Beverley Chamber Music Festivals, Harrogate International Festival, the Cheltenham Festival, Music In The Round, Oxford’s Holywell Music Room and at the Oxford Lieder Festival, and Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge. She is a member of the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective, an Associate Ensemble at the Wigmore Hall, and features on their debut album American Quintets (2021/Chandos).

Recent and forthcoming highlights include Walton’s Cello Concerto with the Hallé, Dobrinka Tabakova’s Concerto for Cello and Strings with the BBC Concert Orchestra, Martinů’s Cello Concerto No.1 with the Brno Philharmonic Orchestra, and performances at the Leeds International Piano Competition and with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Prague Symphony and Czech National Symphony Orchestras, and recordings with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective.

Laura is a graduate of St John’s College, Cambridge. She plays a late 17th-century cello by Francesco Ruggieri of Cremona, on generous loan from a private collection.

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Photo credit: Stephane Crayton

Highlights of his recent concerto performances include appearances with the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Munich Chamber Orchestra, Konzerthaus Orchester Berlin, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, European Union Chamber Orchestra, Halle Orchestra, Academy of St. Martin’s in the Fields, Moscow Symphony Orchestra, St Petersburg Symphony Orchestra, Orquesta Filarmónica de Bolivia, National Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Russian State Philharmonic Orchestra, Residentie Orkest The Hague, Welsh National Opera Orchestra, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, London Philharmonic Orchestra and Philharmonia Orchestra.

He is also much in demand as a director and has directed and performed as a soloist regularly with the Australian Chamber Orchestra, Norwegian Chamber Orchestra, Amsterdam Sinfonietta, London Mozart Players, Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra, New York Chamber Players, Camerata Zurich, Arctic Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra and the Romanian Sinfonietta. He is also regularly invited as guest soloist with orchestras touring the UK and these have recently included the Russian Philharmonic Novosibirsk, Brussels Philharmonic, St Petersburg Symphony Orchestra and the Tonkünstler Orchester. 

His critically acclaimed CPO recording of Andrzej Panufnik’s Violin Concerto with the Konzerthaus Orchester Berlin commemorating the composer’s 100th birthday won an ICMA Special Achievement Award. His most recent recording with the English Symphony Orchestra of Philip Sawyers’s Violin Concerto was released to great critical acclaim.

Alexander was awarded 1st prize at the Trio di Trieste Duo Competition alongside pianist Wu Qian. He is an alumnus of the prestigious Bowers Program (previously named Chamber Music Society Two) at the Lincoln Center, and in 2016 received the Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Award. 

Alexander is a founding member of the award-winning Sitkovetsky Trio with whom he has performed worldwide. The trio won the BBC Music Magazine award for Chamber Music in 2022.

Alexander plays the 1679 ‘Parera’ Antonio Stradivari violin, kindly loaned to him through the Beare’s International Violin Society by a generous sponsor. 

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A violinist who is also a virtuoso of the viola, Milan Pala is in demand for first performances of new works, and he has premiered a large number by such composers as Jean Guillou, František Gregor Emmert, Pascal Dusapin, Erkki-Sven Tüür, Evgeny Irshai, Tõnu Kõrvits, Christophe Sirodeau, Ivan Josip Skender, Adrián Demoč, Jana Kmiťová, Marian Lejava, Ádám Kondor, József Sári and many others. In recent years he has performed for audiences at several prestigious events showcasing new music, of which the most important included the ISCM World New Music Days 2013, the 28th and 29th Music Biennale Zagreb (2015, 2017), Arcus Temporum (Pannonhalma, Hungary), the Melos-Ethos International Festival of Contemporary Music (Bratislava, Slovakia), the Hradec Králové Music Forum (Czech Republic) and the Prague Spring Festival (2020). These appearances include performances of violin concertos of composers such as Harrison Birtwistle, Esa-Pekka Salonen and Pascal Dusapin. 

A very busy concert artist, Milan Pala commands a broad concert repertoire. His career as a soloist has led him to cooperation with conductors such as Theodor Guschlbauer, Howard Arman, Alexander Cernusenko, Pierre-André Valade, Lanfranco Marceletti, Alexander Liebreich, Andreas Sebastian Weiser, Peter Gribanov, Jakub Hrůša, James Feddeck, Case Scaglione, Ondrej Lenárd and Marian Lejava. 

A major project of the ‘enfant terrible of the solo violin’, as Milan Pala was once described in an interview, has been to record the complete works for solo violin by Slovak composers, entitled Violin Solo 1-5. For this momentous undertaking he received multiple awards, including the Prize of the Minister of Culture of the Slovak Republic (2014), the Frico Kafenda Prize (2015) and the Ľudovít Rajter Prize (2009). Milan Pala was the second laureate, and received the award not just for his exceptional performing skills but also for his unique approach to Slovak music. In 2014 he was awarded the Tatra Banka Foundation Prize for his recording of Slovak Violin Concertos with the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Mário Košík. Milan Pala is currently devoted to his project Cantūs Moraviae, in which he maps and records the complete works for solo violin and viola by Moravian composers.  

Milan Pala’s continuously expanding discography contains many works of the world’s violin repertoire. A significant place belongs to the recording of Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin, BWV 1001–1006 (2018), which is a first recording by Slovak violinist in history. With pianist Ladislav Fanzowitz, he is committed to recording the complete sonatas for violin and piano by major composers, with works by Johannes Brahms, Ludwig van Beethoven, Eugen Suchoň, Edvard Grieg, Dmitri Shostakovich and Béla Bartók having been published so far. The most recent outcome of the duo is a live recording of Mieczysław Weinberg’s six Sonatas for Violin and Piano performed at the 50th Moravian Autumn Festival.  

Milan Pala, tireless in his mission of bringing new works and rarely performed music to the audiences, recorded and released eight albums in the season of 2020/21 alone, with music of Pascal Dusapin, Samuil Feinberg, Valentin Bibik, Alfred Schnittke, Leoš Janáček, Adrián Demoč and Jana Kmiťová, most of which have been created in artistic collaboration with his wife, pianist Katarina Palova.  

A result of the inspiring cooperation of many years between Milan Pala and the conductor and composer Marian Lejava is their critically acclaimed recording of violin concertos by Alban Berg and Karol Szymanowski with the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra. The recording, which received the Radio_Head Award (SK) in 2016, has met with favourable response internationally. 

A new, unique instrument – a five-string violin – occupies a special place in Milan Pala’s creative output. Named ‘milanolo’, it is a concert instrument that brings a lower, viola register to the violin, and is the first of its kind. It was created in 2013 at the workshop of the Bursík family of violinmakers in Brno, and bears the name of the performer for whom it was conceived. A special CD presenting the instrument in works by European composers created specifically for the occasion has been issued under the title ‘Milanolo’ (2016). The newest title featuring the five-stringed violin consists of premiere recordings of four concertos for milanolo and strings composed by Slovak composers after Milan Pala’s commission. This recording entitled ‘4 Milanolo Concertos’ was released in 2018. 

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