“Romantic music of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries will predominate, including works by Czech masters. The opening concert, bringing together Evgeny Kissin and Sir András Schiff on the same stage, is, in my view, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Personally, I am also very pleased that Grigory Sokolov will be returning, as he comes to the Czech Republic more or less exclusively for the Firkušný Festival,” says the festival’s Artistic Director Josef Třeštík. As for the performers, the festival once again combines established tradition with the energy of young talents. One of the most anticipated events will be the debut of Lukas Sternath, winner of the ARD Competition Munich 2022 and recipient of the ECHO Klassik Award 2024[JR1] , as well as the return of the outstanding pianist Anna Vinnitskaya, whose artistic profile includes appearances with the Berlin Philharmonic and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The Czech performing tradition will be represented by Marek Kozák, last year’s laureate of the Bach Competition in Leipzig and recipient of the Jiří Bělohlávek Prize 2025 (his festival debut in 2020 was streamed online). The 14th edition of the Firkušný Festival will conclude in grand style with one of the most original pianists on the planet, Grigory Sokolov, whose programme – as always – remains a closely guarded secret.

Ticket sales for all festival concerts will begin online at firkusny.cz/en/ on Thursday, 19 March at 11 a.m. Until June 4th, tickets are automatically discounted by 20% as part of Early Bird.

May 20 Barbara Hannigan & Bertrand Chamayou | A significant part of Barbara Hannigan’s first residency concert will be devoted to her soprano voice. However, the brilliant French pianist Bertrand Chamayou will also perform two exceptionally beautiful solo piano pieces by the Russian classic Alexander Scriabin.

May 22 American pianist Eric Lu, winner of this year’s Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw, will perform compositions by Chopin, Schumann, and Schubert at the Rudolfinum.

May 29 Ensemble Modern I Fans of contemporary music will enjoy the first Prague Offspring concert, which will feature the Double Concerto for Piano, Percussion, and Ensemble by Prague Offspring 2026 resident composer Unsuk Chin. Before the concert, you can meet this world-renowned composer in person at a discussion starting at 6 p.m.

June 1 Argerich & Shani & Rotterdam Philharmonic | The last tickets are available for the concert of world piano legend Martha Argerich with the Rotterdam Philharmonic and conductor Lahav Shani! Martha Argerich returns to Prague Spring after an incredible fifty-two years.é jaro po neuvěřitelných dvaapadesáti letech.

June 3 Lucas & Arthur Jussen | The first concert by today’s most sought-after piano duo with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields is already hopelessly sold out. However, you still have a chance to hear brothers Lucas and Arthur Jussen on June 3 in an attractive programme for two pianos and percussion instruments, for which the last tickets are available!

Programme

• Fryderyk Chopin: Prélude in D-flat major Op. 28 No. 15
• Fryderyk Chopin: Prelude in A-flat major B. 86 Op. Posth.
• Johann Sebastian Bach: Prelude No.1 in C major (from Book 1 of Well-Tempered Clavier) BWV 846
• Sergej Rachmaninov: Prelude in D minor Op. 23 No. 3
• Karol Szymanowski: Nine Preludes Op. 1, excerpts
• Olivier Messiaen: Preludes for piano, excerpts
• Fryderyk Chopin: Prelude in C sharp minor Op. 45
• Sergej Rachmaninov: Prelude in C-sharp minor Op. 3 No. 2
• Henryk Mikołaj Górecki: Four Preludes op. 1, excerpts
• Johann Sebastian Bach: Prelude No.2 in C minor (from Book 1 of Well-Tempered Clavier) BWV 847
• Sergej Rachmaninov: Prelude in G minor Op. 23 No. 5
• Fryderyk Chopin: 24 Preludes Op. 28

More information about the concert

“Last year’s nearly sold-out edition once again demonstrated how popular the piano recital genre is with Czech audiences. This year, we can look forward to another fascinating journey through the world’s piano repertoire, ranging from the Baroque to 20th-century music, featuring both grand Romantic works and intimate miniature forms. We will witness a dialogue across styles and generations. Personally, I am especially looking forward to Jan Lisiecki’s recital. His concert at Prague Spring on 23 May with the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra is completely sold out. The Firkušný Festival offers the chance to hear his artistry once again in November, in an entirely exceptional repertoire,” says Prague Spring Festival Director Pavel Trojan. “The Rudolf Firkušný Piano Festival 2025 will, in a certain way, be dominated by the prelude form, which in every stylistic period has given composers space to express their most intimate emotions. However, we will also experience an American evening with Karel Košárek and Jiří Levíček, culminating in Dave Brubeck’s jazz composition Points on Jazz for two pianos, as well as a performance of Robert Schumann’s and Franz Liszt’s virtuoso works by the legendary Arcadi Volodos. This strong lineup of pianists ranks the Firkušný Festival among top-tier international musical events,” adds Prague Spring Programme Director Josef Třeštík.

8/11 Jan Lisiecki

For the first time, the festival will welcome thirty-year-old Canadian pianist Jan Lisiecki, performing a recital titled Preludes. “I enjoy programmes that balance the familiar with the unfamiliar,” says Lisiecki. “In the first half, I will present different composers’ approaches to the prelude form, while in the second, I will offer a cohesive cycle of Chopin’s Preludes, Op. 28. What makes this programme unique for me is that even the prelude form, in its natural state and on its own – without a following fugue – can lead from somewhere to something. Each piece in the programme has been selected to introduce the one that follows,” explains Lisiecki. Among the composers he will present in the first part of the evening are Johann Sebastian Bach, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Henryk Górecki, Olivier Messiaen, and Karol Szymanowski. Lisiecki’s Preludes programme has already enjoyed success in the Stern Auditorium at Carnegie Hall in New York, Teatro alla Scala in Milan, Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, and BOZAR in Brussels. In Prague, this youngest-ever recipient of the Gramophone Young Artist Award, who has been a leading face of the Deutsche Grammophon label since the age of fifteen, will present it on 8 November 2025 in the Dvořák Hall of the Rudolfinum.

10/11 Yulianna Avdeeva

The second evening of the festival will be dedicated exclusively to the works of Dmitri Shostakovich. Through this exceptional programme, the festival will also commemorate fifty years since the composer’s passing, which falls this August. Yulianna Avdeeva, winner of the Chopin Competition in Warsaw, will perform a selection from the iconic cycle The 24 Preludes and Fugues, Op. 87, which Shostakovich composed at the height of the Stalinist era, between 1950 and 1951. He was inspired to write the cycle by Johann Sebastian Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier, Books One and Two. “Still, I do not want to compare these two cycles, because 24 Preludes and Fugues is pure Shostakovich,” says Avdeeva. Only a handful of pianists worldwide have this complete cycle – one of the most important piano cycles of the 20th century – in their repertoire, Avdeeva among them. This year, she will present it in venues including the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin, and the Palau de la Música in Barcelona. A selection from the cycle will be performed in Prague in the Dvořák Hall of the Rudolfinum on 10 November 2025.

12/11 Karel Košárek & Jiří Levíček

The third evening of the festival will be dedicated to American 20th-century music, spanning from the Impressionist-tinged cycle 3 Tone-Pictures, Op. 5, by Charles Tomlinson Griffes, inspired in part by Yeats’ poem The Lake Isle of Inisfree, to Copland’s famous El Salón México in Leonard Bernstein’s piano arrangement, Samuel Barber’s Piano Sonata, and the electrifying Virtuoso Études after Gershwin, composed by one of America’s earliest piano virtuosos, Earl Wild. The Czech pianist Karel Košárek, winner of the Walter Naumburg Competition in New York (1997), will showcase his mastery in these pieces. In the second half of the programme, he will be joined by jazz pianist Jiří Levíček, winner of the Phillips International Jazz Competition (2009), for a performance of Dave Brubeck’s Points on Jazz for two pianos. An artist with extensive experience in the American jazz scene, Levíček spent several years as a member of the One O’Clock Lab Band, a group nominated multiple times for the Grammy Awards. Czech audiences know him primarily from his work with the Robert Balzar Trio and the B-Side Band. The evening, subtitled “God Bless American Jazz”, will take place in the Dvořák Hall of the Rudolfinum on 12 November.

13/11 Arcadi Volodos

The festival’s closing night will belong to one of today’s most original pianists, Arcadi Volodos. He previously performed at the Firkušný Festival in 2021, when he stunned audiences with his interpretations of Franz Schubert and Robert Schumann. For his return to Prague, he will once again open his recital with Schubert, this time performing his penultimate piano sonata, D.959, composed in the last year of his life. This will be followed by Schumann’s Davidsbündlertänze, Op. 6, a cycle of dances he began composing one week after his secret engagement to Clara Wieck in the summer of 1837. Schumann attributed the composition to his dual artistic alter egos, “Florestan” and “Eusebius”. The recital will culminate in Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 13 in A Minor in Volodos’ own arrangement, in which he merges introspective depth in musical structure with breathtaking virtuosity. Arcadi Volodos will conclude the 13th edition of the Rudolf Firkušný Piano Festival in the Dvořák Hall of the Rudolfinum on 13 November 2025.

Festival Partners

Partners of the 13th edition of the Rudolf Firkušný Piano Festival are the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic and the City of Prague. The Official Vehicle of the festival is Mercedes-Benz Česká republika.

Ticket Sales

Ticket sales for the 13th edition of the Rudolf Firkušný Piano Festival will begin on Wednesday, 19 March, at 11:00 AM. Tickets will be available for purchase online at www.firkusny.cz. Until 3 June, an Early Bird discount of 20 % applies to individual ticket purchases. A subscription ticket for all four recitals is also available with a 30% discount.

The festival offered four recitals in the Dvořák Hall of the Rudolfinum and one in the Bohuslav Martinů Hall at HAMU (Prague Academy of Performing Arts, Music and Dance Faculty). This year’s performers were Sir András Schiff, Chloe Jiyeong Mun, Alexander Melnikov, Ivo Kahánek and his students Anna Gaálová, Pavol Praženica and Matouš Zukal, the final concert belonged to Jean-Efflam Bavouzet. “A good concert needs an inspiring personality on stage, quality music and an audience that listens and is genuinely interested in what is happening. The concerts of this festival have an amazing atmosphere thanks to a great audience that is absolutely immersed in the music,” Jean-Efflam Bavouzet commented for the festival. The partners of the 12th Rudolf Firkušný Piano Festival were the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, the Capital City of Prague, Mercedes-Benz Czech Republic and Citibank. More information about the 12th edition can be found on the festival website.

A selection of reviews

novinky.cz (Alex Švamberk)

[…] Although Schiff concentrates on interpreting the music of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn and Schubert, he delivered Janáček brilliantly, capturing the dramatic urgency of the theme, although he said during the performance of Smetana that he was not as good at Czech music as Czech interpreters. Along with Beethoven’s works (in addition to the Bagatelles, Sonata No. 30 in E major was also performed), these were the highlights of the festival’s opening concert.

PolyHarmonie.cz (Ivan Žáček)

[…] I consider Schiff’s performance [of Beethoven’s Six Bagatelles, Op. 126], though less explosive, to be one of the best, alongside Maurizio Pollini, Alfred Brendel and, most recently, Nikita Mndoyants. This was followed by Bedřich Smetana’s Three Poetic Polkas Op. 8 (1854), three tender flowers full of thoughtful reflection that must have delighted all musicians’ hearts. I would especially highlight the fragility of the most beautiful of them, the middle Polka in G minor.

KlasikaPlus.cz (Martina Heroldová)

[…] Mun played impressively, especially the first part entitled Reflections in the Water. Although this is one of Debussy’s many “water” pieces, it brings in new sound timbres that the composer was exploring and experimenting with in piano sound at the beginning of the 20th century. A flood of arpeggios, tremolos and glissandos are used here to represent light reflecting off the water’s surface and its ripples, played with such ease by the pianist that it seemed as if she was just lightly brushing the water’s surface with her hands instead of touching the keyboard. The tiny staccatos then evoke water droplets, and the pianist played them in such a way as if the tones were dripping from her fingers.

OperaPlus.cz (Jiří Bezděk)

[…] Alexander Melnikov presented himself as a typical graduate of the Moscow piano school, of which the legendary Sviatoslav Richter is also a representative. Melnikov is also proud of his legacy. His dizzying and utterly reliable finger technique, even in the fastest tempi, is somewhat reminiscent of him. […] It was almost unbelievable with what ease the pianist immediately adapted to the ever-changing instrumental mechanics and with what perfection he mastered all the pieces. […] The whole realisation team must be paid tribute to, because the result was outstanding.

casopisharmonie.cz (Věroslav Němec)

[…] Melnikov’s handling of this instrument [an 1848 Ignaz Pleyel romantic piano] was truly masterful. His Chopin was beautifully flowing and singing, and sounded equally beautiful in the sonorous passages with full instrumentation as in the simple vocal lines (the wonderful one-part recitative just before the final Assai allegro).

Szafa Melomana (Mateusz Ciupka)

[…] Kahanek demonstrated what he is appreciated for in the Czech Republic: for his amazing flexibility in moving from technical fireworks to sweet, tender lyricism. […] The exemplary organization, the friendly atmosphere, the right choice of invited artists and the richness of intellectual, not only aesthetic experiences make me want to put this event [Rudolf Firkušný Piano Festival] on my calendar for good.

KlasikaPlus.cz (Kateřina Pincová)

[…] The most difficult task, however, was certainly to raise the interpretation to the level of symphonic sound, i.e. to support the creation of timbres as much as possible and to reproduce sufficiently convincingly the places that are entrusted in the score to characteristically different instruments (e.g. strings). Some parts were unsurpassed in this respect (e.g. I have never heard the opening of Vltava in such a colourful, sonically compact way and at the same time so specifically processed).

OperaPlus.cz (Jiří Bezděk)

[…] Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, a French pianist of the middle generation, presented extraordinary abilities and skills in the field of piano coloristics and poetry. […] In Bavouzet’s interpretation of impressionistic means of expression, we hear not only the plots in the first plane, but we also capture the plasticity in the relations of the accompanying plots – counter-voices, accompanying figurations, etc. Moreover, everything has a specific timbre corresponding to the set content.

The following texts have been prepared by the author of copies of historical instruments, the master Christoph Kern, whose art and work can be found on this website.

Michael Mietke’s Harpsichord, Berlin ca. 1710
A 2013 copy by Christoph Kern

In his time, Michael Mietke was one of the most renowned instrument builders in northeastern Germany. His fame extended far beyond Berlin. He is closely associated particularly with Johann Sebastian Bach and his son Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. Although little information has survived about what harpsichords J. S. Bach preferred or owned, we know for certain that he commissioned a large harpsichord from his employer in Köthen, made by Michael Mietke, on which he premiered his Brandenburg Concertos. Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s “working” harpsichord for Frederick II also came from Mietke’s workshop. The original of it has been preserved in Berlin’s Charlottenburg Palace. Mietke’s work is a fusion of the conflicting sound concepts of the Franco-Flemish tradition and the Italian tradition. His instruments are therefore suitable for a wide range of styles. The sonic (tonal) purity and richness of the registers make it easy to follow even complex voice leading. This makes them particularly suitable for polyphonic music. Mietke had an excellent knowledge of how to adapt different architectural styles. He was once even accused of forgery because he copied French instruments and sold them as imported goods at high prices.

Anton Walter’s Hammerflügel, Vienna 1795
A 2007 copy by Christoph Kern

At the end of the 18th century, Anton Walter was one of the best and most famous Viennese piano builders. One of his instruments was even owned by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who had it transported all over Vienna for his Academy concerts. The instrument is now in Mozart’s house in Salzburg. Anton Walter’s pianos are often copied today, not only because he set a new high standard with his work, but because they represent an entire era. Beethoven also wanted a piano from Walter. However, Walter was unwilling to meet the composer’s special demands and, moreover, demanded the usual purchase price. Unlike his competitors, who always provided Beethoven with the latest models for free, Walter could probably afford this approach. Early pianos of this era usually have a range of five or five and a half octaves and two knee levers instead of pedals. One lifts the “dampers”, the other operates a mechanism that forces a thin substance between the hammer and the strings, producing a softer sound, as if the string were struck with a softer hammer.

Conrad Graf’s Hammerflügel, Vienna 1826
A 2019 copy by Christoph Kern

While the 19th century saw an acceleration in piano production, the size, scale of the keyboard, mechanics and musical aesthetic requirements were constantly changing. Two design approaches – English/French on the one hand and South German/Viennese on the other – competed with each other and differed significantly in mechanics and sound. In the 1820s, Conrad Graf reached a peak in the construction of the Viennese type of piano. His instruments are still among the most sought-after today and are unique not only in their technical but also in their tonal quality. Their sound is rich in colour and nuance, warm and “romantic” in the best sense of the word. This makes “ein Graf” an excellent choice for the late works of Beethoven and especially Schubert. As was customary at the time, the construction was all wood, with no iron frame or cast-iron plate. The hammers are not covered with felt but with leather. The sound can be changed by means of four pedals.

Ignaz Pleyel’s Hammerflügel No. 14897, Paris 1848
Original restored by Christoph Kern

The pianos made by Parisian piano builder Ignaz Pleyel had a lasting influence on 19th century piano  compositions. They are characterised by their great variety of sound and are unsurpassed, especially in more intimate settings. Their sound is extremely melodious and malleable. They are closely associated with the work of Fryderyk Chopin, who owned several Pleyel instruments during his lifetime and held them in high esteem. His last piano, No. 14810, is housed in the Chopin Museum in Warsaw. It dates from the same year as the original, which will be presented in Prague, and is identical in construction. Pianos of this type were produced on a large scale and adorned many Parisian salons in the 19th century. They are an excellent testimony to the musical taste of the period in which they were made.