JAN BARTOŠ

Jan Bartoš ranks among the most exciting young Czech pianists. Backed up by Alfred Brendel, one of the world’s most accomplished pianists, last year he recorded for Supraphon an album of Mozart’s piano concertos with the conductor Jiří Bělohlávek, the Czech Philharmonic and the Doležal Quartet, which met with laudatory responses in the global media, including Gramophone, the BBC, the Sunday Times, Fanfare, etc.
On 22nd June, Supraphon is scheduled to release a new Jan Bartoš recording, a double album featuring Beethoven’s piano sonatas, which too captures the artist’s critically acclaimed ability to blend the sophisticated architecture and profound emotionality of the performed works. The album will be released on 2 CDs, as well as in digital formats. The booklet contains photographs made by the legendary Czech-born American photojournalist Antonín Kratochvíl.

“The impulse which prompted me to make the album was my lifelong interest in Beethoven’s music and personality. The idea of recording his works has been on my mind for a very long time indeed,” said Jan Bartoš, adding: “I myself am fascinated by the range of his personality, virtually encompassing everything, which duly reflected in his music. When it comes to the pieces on my album, they render a variety of features – masculine energy and elegance, in Opus 2, nobleness and earnestness, in Opus 14, passion and extreme drama, in Appassionata. The final Sonata and Bagatelles teem with compassion and love, while harbouring mystic visions … I deem Beethoven to be the greatest revolutionary in the history of music. His highly personal approach changed everything. Without him, Romanticism and the further evolution of music are simply unimaginable – he was linked up to by Schumann, Brahms, Wagner, Bruckner, Mahler, Strauss, Schoenberg, Shostakovich, and dozens of other major composers. Beethoven essentially transformed many genres, and his final pieces showed the path to the distant future.”

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