BOHUSLAV MARTINů FOUNDATION
Commemorative medal for the Smetana Trio
for excellent domestic and foreign presentation of the Bohuslav Martinů´s work – September 2022
BBC Music Magazine Chamber Choice – December 2020
BBC Music Magazine Chamber Choice – May 2019
Disc du Jour – the 29th May 2019
France Musique
BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE AWARDS 2017
Chamber music record
DIAPASON D´OR
September 2006, May 2016
Sunday Times „Recording of the week“
March 2016
BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE AWARDS 2007
Chamber music record
BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
4 times CD OF THE MONTH
August 2005, September 2006,
December 2008, May 2016
MusicWeb International
Recording of the month
June 2014
The Smetana Trio, founded in the year 1934 by the legendary Czech pianist Josef Páleníček, is today one of the foremost Czech ensembles. In 2024 the Smetana Trio celebrates 90th jubilee of its foundation. It can be seen frequently on leading concert stages both in the Czech Republic (Prague Spring, Janáček´s May, Moravian Autumn, Concentus moraviae, Malá Strana Chamber Festivities, Lipa Musica) and abroad (France, Germany, Switzerland, Great Britain, Benelux, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Japan, Brazil, USA, Canada, South America, South Korea, Egypt).
The Smetana Trio works with leading conductors – i. a. Jiří Bělohlávek, Libor Pešek, Serge Baudo, John Axelrod, Michael Boder, Tomáš Hanus, Stanislav Vavřínek – and Czech and foreign orchestras, including, for example the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra della Svizzera italiana Lugano, the Prague Symphony Orchestra, the Prague Philharmonic, the ONPL Orchestra Nantes, the Chamber Philharmonic Pardubice, the Moravian Philharmonic Olomouc.
The Smetana Trio has made a number of recordings for Czech and international labels and has recorded regularly for Supraphon since 2000. This cooperation has brought a number of prestigious awards both at home and abroad.
The Smetana Trio performed many times on international and home stages in last times – incl. in England – incl. regularly prestigious Wigmore Hall in London, in Italy, Germany, in the USA – last time in 12 cities for example on renowned stages in Washington, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Diego, in Switzerland, Portugal, Spain and South America. In the Czech Republic on the Prague Spring Festival, the Lipa Musica and Prague Proms, the Czech Philharmonic Chamber Series in Prague Rudolfinum. The Wigmore Hall, one of the most prestigious concert house in the world, has chosen the Smetana Trio as the residential ensemble for the season 2024/25. The Czech Music Year 2024 means for the Smetana Trio a great jubilee of Bedrich Smetana, Antonin Dvorak, Josef Suk, Leos Janacek a.o. and also the founder of the Smetana Trio pianist and composer Josef Páleníček (born 1914) and the Smetana trio itself (founded 1934).
Jitka Čechová
piano
Markéta Janoušková
violin
Jan Páleníček
cello
Pianist Jitka Čechová completed her piano studies at the Prague Conservatory (Prof. Novotný) and continued at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (Prof. Toperczer). Her individual musical gifts were then developed to their full during postgraduate studies under Eugen Indjic in Paris and Vitali Berzon in Freiburg. She acquired further experience during her research studies at master classes given by Rudolf Kehrer in Weimar, and Eugen Indjic and Lazar Berman in Piešťany.
Jitka Čechová has been the laureate of numerous international competitions – International Chopin Competition in Marianske Lazne, International Smetana Competition in Hradec Kralove, International Hummel Piano Competition in Bratislava, International Chamber Music Competition in Detmold.
She has been the subject of critical acclaim as a soloist in many European countries as well as overseas (South Africa, South America and Japan), where she cooperates with prominent orchestras (such as Prague Symphony Orchestra FOK, Symphony Orchestra SWR, South German Philharmonic Orchestra Konstanz, Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, Prague Chamber Philharmonia, Munich Symphony Orchestra, Symphonic Radio Orchestra Montevideo, and Symphonic Orchestra Durban) and gives both solo and chamber performances. She is regularly invited to prestigious international stages and festivals (including Prague Spring, Graz, Paris, Alte Oper Frankfurt, Baden-Baden, Bodensee Festival, Český Krumlov, Moravian Autumn, Edinburgh, Bamberg, Janáček May, Ticino Musica).
Chamber music is an indispensable component of Jitka Čechová’s musical identity. She brings a full emotional commitment to bear to her role as pianist in the Smetana Trio, supported by the brilliant technical basis of her solo metier. Within the Smetana Trio partnership she also plays chamber duets with her partners in the Trio (Markéta Janoušková – violin, Jan Páleníček – cello) and performs solo pieces as part of the Trio’s chamber music repertoire.
The focus of Jitka Čechová’s repertoire is on works by the Czech composers – Smetana, Dvořák, Janáček, and Martinů. She has given two concerts consisting of works by Smetana at the world-famous Edinburgh Festival in Scotland. Zdeněk Lukáš dedicated his Third Piano Concerto to her, which she premiered with spectacular success during her concert tour of Germany with the Symphony Orchestra Südwestfunk (cond. Petr Altrichter).
Jitka Čechová has made a number of recordings for the labels Intercord, BMG, Lotos, and Cube. In 2014 – in the year of Bedrich Smetana´s jubilee – she finished her recording of the complete piano works by Bedřich Smetana for Supraphon (8 CDs), a project that has collected awards by major music critics and magazines both at home and abroad – Diapason, Répertoire, International Record Review, and Harmonie. Recently she made a recording of all three piano concertos and concertino written by Josef Palenicek in the cooperation with the Czech Radio Symphony Orchestra (cond. Ronald Zollman and Stanislav Vavrinek). Presently she is cooperating on the large project of the complete sonatas recordning by Domenico Scarlatti for the Czech Radio.
She has given master classes in Prague, London, the Northern College of Music in Manchester, Brasilia and Campos do Jordao in Brazil, the Colburn School University in Los Angeles, Eau Claire in Wisconsin, and in Luxemburg.
Violinist Markéta Janoušková is an alumnus of the prestigious Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler in Berlin. ( She further studied at the Prague Conservatory and Academy of Performing Arts in Prague and at the Chicago College of Performing Arts.) She is regularly invited to international festivals and concerts throughout Europe and overseas to stages such as the chamber music halls of the Berlin Philharmonic and Elbphilharmonie, the Konserhuset in Stockholm and the Rudolfinum and Smetana Hall in Prague. Recent concert highlights include appearances at the Sibiu Philharmonic’s Brave Music Festival, La Dimore de Quartetto in Venice and Hulencourt Art in Belgium. As a prolific recording artist, Markéta Janoušková has collaborated with Czech and European publishing houses and radio stations. Her latest solo album “l’Astre Bleu” was released on the renown German label GENUIN (Naxos DE) She newly interpreted the complete oeuvre of Miloslav Kabeláč for violin as part of an exclusive project for Deutschlandfunk Kultur/ Cappriccio, in which her colleagues are soloists or solo members ofe Berliner Philharmoniker. She has been nominated for the prestigious Ursula and Dwight Mamlok Award 2022 in the solo category for artists under 35 who are systematically engaged in the performance of contemporary music. Markéta Janoušková plays a unique
H. Lockey Hill violin (18th century), kindly loaned from a private collection.
Jan Páleníček studied at the Conservatory and the Academy of the Performing Arts in Prague under Saša Večtomov and Miloš Sádlo. Close contacts with Paul Tortelier, the world-famous French cellist, made for a happy culmination to his early development. He studied chamber music under his father, Josef Páleníček, and in the class of Josef Vlach – first violin in the legendary Vlach Quartet.
Participation in international competitions has brought Jan Páleníček numerous awards. As a soloist he plays regularly with leading Czech and international orchestras, including the Prague Symphony Orchestra, the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Janáček Philharmonic Orchestra Ostrava, the Lugano Festival Orchestra (Switzerland), the Suk Chamber Orchestra, the Hradec Králové Symphony Orchestra, the Pardubice Chamber Philharmonic, the Monte Carlo Philharmonic, the Brno State Philharmonic, the Bohuslav Martinů Philharmonic Orchestra, the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra (Germany), the Prague Philharmonia, the Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra Olomouc, and the KwaZulu-Natal Philharmonic-Durban (South Africa). His concert tours have taken him not only to numerous Europe countries, but to America, Africa and Japan as well.
He has made numerous recordings for both Czech and internationals labels, and for radio and television.
His recordings of the sonatas of Brahms, Martinů, and Rachmaninov and the concertos of Dvořák, Tchaikovsky and Haydn have been exceptionally well received.
For a number of years he taught at the Prague Conservatory and the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague.
Jan Páleníček plays the unique instrument made by F. Delanoy in 1829.
Contact
Smetana Trio
Plav 111
370 07 České Budějovice
Czech Republic
+420 603 838 014
cechova.piano@gmail.com’
WhatsApp. +420 603 838 014
+420 777 838 016
jan.palenicek@gmail.com
WatsApp. +420 777 838 016
+420 605 476 635
ma.janouskova@gmail.com
WhatsApp. +420 605 476 635