Information
Admission
Adults: 8 EUR
Students, children, seniors, disabled: 5 EUR
Pre-sale
Nitra Gallery (opening hours)
All programming and performers are subject to change.
* Requirement for Proof of Negative COVID-19 Ag Test (not older than 24 hours) or PCR test (not older than 72 hours).
Support
With financial support of the Slovak Arts Council public funds. The Council is the leading partner of the project.
The main purpose of the concert series is to support high-quality concert art that can be developed in an architecturally and acoustically unique concert space – the Concert Hall of the County House featuring a piano from Steinway & Sons.
Our goal is to present:
- high-level performances by renowned national performers and ensembles: Miki Škuta, the Mucha Quartet, Slovak State Philharmonic Košice,
- 2 piano recitals of high-level pianists – Slovak piano player Miki Škuta who has been widely successful abroad as well; his performance of the Goldberg Variations by J. S. Bach, one of the best known and most difficult pieces of piano music, received the highest score in a specialised English music journal, the BBC Music Magazine; and the pianist Ivan Šiller who is best known for his piano concerts, conducting and organising musical and educational projects, all of which are highly successful both at home and abroad.
- Pieces by Slovak composers of the 20th century who are less known among the general audience even though they belong to some of the most important personalities of Slovak music – performed by the Mucha Quartet ensemble, ›› and last but not least, the PiaTango Duo consisting of the guitar player Karol Kompas and violinist Samuel Mikláš who will bring a boost of South American rhythms to the Concert Hall.
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May 26, 2021, 6pm
Slovak State Philharmonic Košice
June 9, 2021, 6pm
PiaTango Duo
June 17, 2021, 6pm
Mucha Quartet
June 24, 2021, 6pm
Miki Škuta
June 30, 2021, 6pm
Ivan Šiller
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More Information About the Performers
SLOVAK STATE PHILHARMONIC KOŠICE (SSPK) was founded in 1968 as the second professional performing symphony orchestra in Slovakia. It has quickly gained respect of both professionals and the audience and become one of the leading representatives of Slovak performing art both at home and abroad. The orchestra has performed at various distinguished international music festival and important cultural centres. In 1994, SPPK went on a month-long tour around the US where they performed as the first Slovak symphony orchestra on the American continent. Over the course of its existence, it has been successful not just on European concert stages, but also North American and Asian ones. Besides actual performances, SPPK also presents its art in the form recordings (over 160 CDs), some of which are one of a kind – premiere recordings of their individual pieces. The orchestra has cooperated with world-famous artists (e.g. I. Oistrach, G. Kremer, V. Gergiev, A. Wit, J. Bělohlávek, L. Pešek, V. Smetáček, Ľ. Rajter, O. Lenárd, G. Feidman, I. Moravec, J. Suk, L. Pavarotti, P. Domingo, D. Fischer-Dieskau, J. Fischer, S. Kopčák, P. Mikuláš, P. Dvorský, E. Gruberová and others). The orchestra repertoire contains all of the heavily rotated pieces that stretch from the Baroque period until today. SSPK is the only orchestra in Slovakia that organises three international festivals – The Spring Music Festival Košice, The Ivan Sokol International Festival of Organ Music and co-organises the ARS NOVA festival of contemporary music.
PIATANGO DUO is a duo of musicians whose love for the rhythms of tango joined them together. It consists of the guitarist Karol Kompas who studied guitar at the Conservatory in Žilina and at the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava. He also went on a study trip to Katowice where he studied at the Academy of Music. He finished his doctoral studies at the Department of Music at CPU in Nitra where he currently teaches. He also teaches guitar at the Conservatory in Topoľčany. He has worked with ensembles like Veni Ensemble, Musica Aeterna, ZOE Orchestra and others. He also performs as a part of the Mertz Guitar Duo and also together with the flautist B. Kolářová. He is the founder of the PiaTango Project, an ensemble focused on the work of the Argentinian composer A. Piazzolla. In 2015, he founded FATANGO, an Argentinian tango festival in Nitra.
The second member is Samuel Mikláš who graduated from the Bratislava Conservatory, the Prague Conservatory and the Academy of Performing Arts where he attended a course of historical performance. He has played as a guest with the Czech Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra and participated at many of their concerts around the Czech Republic and Germany (the Berlin Philharmonic, Konzerthaus Berlin and others). He plays violin in the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra and first violin in the ZOE Chamber Orchestra and the Ad Gloriam Dei ensemble.
The MUCHA QUARTET was founded in 2003 at the Bratislava Conservatory and belongs to one of the most important chamber ensembles in Slovakia. They studied chamber music at the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava, attending a course led by Ján Slávik, at Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst in Vienna under Johannes Meissl and also at Escuela Superior de Música Reina Sofía in Madrid under Günter Pichler. They finished second at the International Performance Competition at the Bohuslav Martinů Foundation in Prague (2010), third at the Gianni Bergamo Classic Music Award 2012 international competition in Lugano and won the Josef Windisch Preis 2013 competition in Vienna. At the Premio Paolo Borciani 2014 international competition, they received the second prize and the Audience Award. They received the first prize at the Antonín Dvořák International Competition of Chamber Music 2014 (Prague) as well as the first prize at the Leoš Janáček International Competition 2015 (Brno). The Mucha Quartet performs regularly at various music festivals and cultural events both at home and abroad – Bratislava Music Festival, Prague Spring, Concentus Moraviae, recital at Vienna’s Musikverein, Bordeaux String Quartet Festival, the Allegretto festival in Žilina, Albrechtina – (Un)known Music, Slovak Philharmonic chamber series, the Luxembourg Philharmonic, Musiksommer Reichenau, Schubertiade Schwarzenberg, etc. Their record library includes their profile CD (2013), Slovak Songs by Béla Bartók in Cooperation With Iva Bittová (2015), Bella – Dvořák CD (2017), as well as Four Musicians CD (2018). Between 2016 – 2017, they were the resident ensemble of the Devin Radio station.
MIKI ŠKUTA is the only Slovak musician who is able to reach and navigate the highest levels of classical music and jazz as well as pop music. He has been very successful abroad as a concert pianist. His performances of Bach’s scores have received the highest reviews in a specialised English music journal, the BBC Music Magazine. His 2013 London Kings Place concert hall solo performances had sold out. He has received an invitation to the festival of the best piano players of today, the Piano, that was held at the prestige concert hall of the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music in Budapest. His solo concerts have been also very popular in Salzburg, Paris and Cannes, but also at the Bratislava Music Festival. He has performed with the Slovak Philharmonic, the Bruckner Orchester Linz, die reihe – Wien, Österreichisches Ensemble für Neue Musik Salzburg, the Janáček Philharmonic Orchestra, the Danubius Symphony Orchestra Budapest, etc. He has recorded approximately forty CDs for Slovak, Hungarian, German and Austrian record labels. Recently, his classical music efforts have been accompanied almost exclusively by improvised music and composing. Since 1993, his compositions (jazz, pop music or contemporary music) have been heard in Austria, Germany, Switzerland, France, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Hungary and United States at around one hundred and fifty concerts. In 2017, the Melos-Étos international festival of contemporary music introduced him as a guitarist in the Vampyr piece by Tristan Murail for the first time.
IVAN ŠILLER is a concert piano player, conductor and organiser of music and educational projects. He studied piano in Bratislava (the Academy of Performing Arts) and Ghent (Royal Conservatory), he also took residencies in the US (Tanglewood Music Center), Canada (Banff Centre for the Arts) and Germany (Ferienkurse für Neue Musik Darmstadt). He usually performs contemporary music as a part of an ensemble or solo, while also doing musical re-interpretation of fine art. He enjoys collaborations with other musicians and forms various groups like the Cluster ensemble, Ensemble Ricercata or the Prague Modern. He also cooperates on creating alternative “educational institutions” – the VENI ACADEMY student project or a series of workshops called the SoundOrchestra that focus on improvisations, graphic scores and experimental music. He has created several festivals, concert series and other musical projects. He is the chairman of the Slovak section of the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) that he also cooperated with on the best music project of the year 2013 – ISCM World New Music Days. In 2016, the Cluster ensemble’s first CD was nominated for the Tatra banka Foundation Art Award, the Crystal Wing and the Radio Head Awards prize.
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