March 25, 2026: Music and Dance in Harmony: A Talk with Zemlinsky Quartet
Date and time: 25 March 2025 at 4.00 pm
Venue: The Small Hall of the Municipal Library in Prague
Tickets will be available online soon.
We would like to invite you to another part of our series of talks with artists involved in the art of dance.
Performing with live musicians on stage is an extraordinary experience for both the dancer and the audience; indeed, no recording is capable of evoking the same feeling of tension, the interaction and tuning in to each other, or the authentic emotions.
The Prague Chamber Ballet has been lucky to establish a long-time collaboration with the renowned Zemlinsky Quartet, who have turned many a chorography into a concert. On this collaboration, as well as other topics, we will focus with our guests, and especially with the Quartet’s head, violist Petr Holman.
The collaboration of a live quartet with a dance ensemble is unique on the Czech music and dance scene, yet the Prague Chamber Ballet takes great pride in this tradition. The ensemble has worked with the Zemlinsky Quartet for a very long time. One of their recent joint productions was the one-act ballet The Cross by the Brook by choreographer Alena Pešková, set to Antonín Dvořák’s String Quartet in d minor op. 34. Remarkable was the new staging of Janáček’s Intimate Letters, choreographed by Petr Zuska. Another exceptional production was the presentation of the choreography by Pavel Šmok and Kateřina Dedková-Franková On the Overgrown Path with guest clarinettist Igor Františák. How close is the friendship between the two ensembles? What does staging of a new joint choreography encompass? How do musicians feel when they perform with dancers on stage? And in what ways do they have to give room to the dancers? Come and learn more during our talk at the Municipal Library. You can also look forward to a musical surprise.
The Zemlinsky Quartet has been present on the music scene since 1994, though the name of composer Alexander Zemlinsky was added only in 2000. In addition to their concert activity, they have also recorded a number of quartets on CDs and have received many prestigious awards, including the Diapason d’Or in France for their recording of Dvořák’s early quartets or the Grand Prix at the Quatuors à Bordeaux competition. The Quartet has also won several international string quartet competitions in Banff, Canada, Prague (at the Prague Spring Festival), and London.
The ensemble is composed of František Souček (first violin), Petr Střížek (second violin), Petr Holman (viola), and Vladimír Fortin (cello).