Anda-Louise Bogza – recitál

• Anda-Louise Bogza – recital
• Jan Simon – piano
• Megumi Otsuka – piano

Program

On Monday, May 24, the Prague State Opera is mounting a special concert programme featuring two exceptional artists, the soprano Anda-Louise Bogza, and the pianist Jan Simon. Anda-Louise Bogza is known to opera-lovers not just from her appearances on her home turf at the Prague State Opera, but also on the international circuit, where she has been a regular guest of many major opera houses (during the 2009/2010 season including for instance the Arena in Verona, Dresden’s Semperoper, or the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma). She has been equally busy on the concert platform, a field where she has scored numerous triumphs in this country and abroad (at Vienna’s Musikverein, Salzburg’s Festspielhaus, London’s Royal Albert Hall, Tokyo’s Suntory Hall, the Liederhalle in Stuttgart, the National Concert Hall in Dublin, the Brucknerhaus in Linz, the Anfiteatro in Madrid, and elsewhere). She is likewise an outstanding interpreter of songs, the facet of her art she will present at the Prague State Opera on May 24. Accompanied on the piano by Megumi Otsuka, she will deliver songs by Schubert, Schumann, Liszt, Brahms, Rachmaninov, Dvořák, Richard Strauss, Respighi, and George Enescu.

Jan Simon, the laureate of several prestigious contests (including the Chopin Competition of Mariánské Lázně, 1983; the Chopin Competition in Mallorca, 1985; the Prague Spring Competition, 1988; or the Queen Elizabeth Competition in Brussels, 1991), will contribute to the concert programme his accounts of piano works by Frédéric Chopin, a composer whose anniversary is being marked worldwide this year and whose piano concertos he recorded with the Prague Philharmonia under Jiří Bělohlávek’s baton. Jan Simon appears regularly with some of the most widely renowned Czech and international orchestras (of his recent commitments, one shouldn’t fail to mention a concert at New York’s Carnegie Hall, on April 4, 2010), and is a sought-after soloist. Active in various chamber formations, he has worked most notably with the cellist Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt, or with the violinist Josef Suk.