The Slovak Quasars Ensemble will welcome Czech clarinetist Marek Švejkar as a guest for its March concert. Alongside flutist Eric Lamb and under the baton of Ivan Buffa, Švejkar will perform on Wednesday, March 5, at 7:00 PM in the Small Concert Studio of the Slovak Radio in Bratislava. The program is built around three major composers: Pierre Boulez, Igor Maia, and Vladimír Bokes.
Quasars Ensemble is a professional Slovak ensemble that has been building an international reputation since 2008 through its bold programming, often juxtaposing contemporary works with the pillars of classical music history. The upcoming March performance focuses on three names inextricably linked to 20th and 21st-century musical literature. The program is bookended by two compositions by Brazilian composer Igor Maia, who studied at King’s College London under Silvina Milstein and George Benjamin. Maia’s works, which explore the intersection of Brazilian folk and classical music, have been performed worldwide, and he has found success in several European and American composition competitions. The Quasars Ensemble concert will feature the premiere of Tempo, Terra, Trama… at the very start of the evening, followed by another premiere, Entre a Tormenta, to conclude the program.
The concert will also feature two works by the late Slovak composer Vladimír Bokes, who passed away last year and served as a professor of composition at the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava (VŠMU). Bokes studied in Bratislava under Alexander Moyzes and Dezider Kardoš. His work was influenced by the poetics of the Second Viennese School, dodecaphony, and serialism, as well as the techniques of the post-war avant-garde. In searching for his own compositional path, he transitioned from polyrhythm and polymeter to aleatoric music, confronting principles of strict organization with chance operations. The core of Bokes’s output—which was banned in the 1980s due to its leaning toward Western influences—lies in orchestral and chamber music. From Bokes’s repertoire, Quasars Ensemble will perform String Trio and Musique triste for the same instrumentation.
The central pillar of the program at the Slovak Radio building will be Boulez’s composition Domaines, today considered one of the key works of the 20th century. This groundbreaking piece, premiered in 1968, was originally intended for solo clarinet. Two years later, Boulez adopted a circular arrangement consisting of six instrumental units, with the clarinet acting as the sixth. The result is a structure in two large parts—original and mirror—derived directly from the dialogue between the clarinet and each of the instrumental groups.
The solo part in Bratislava will be performed by the young Czech clarinetist Marek Švejkar, who studied at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris in the classes of Philippe Berrod and Jérôme Comte, and at the Conservatoire à Rayonnement Régional de Paris under Franck Amet and Paul Meyer. Currently, Švejkar is a member of the program at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome under the guidance of Alessandro Carbonare. Švejkar is also a graduate of the Academy of Chamber Music and a winner of numerous international competitions. His current season includes a performance at the Krumlov Festival and a debut in Bucharest, Romania.
Joining Švejkar as a soloist in Bratislava will be American flutist Eric Lamb. The orchestra will be conducted by Ivan Buffa, a Slovak composer, conductor, pianist, and educator who has been the artistic director of Quasars Ensemble since its founding in 2008.