Jan Škrdlík

Biography

The family came from Slovácko, a rural region in the south of the country. Parents Jaroslav and Anna Škrdlík moved to the town of Ostrava in search of work. The name “Škrdlík” is derived from the word škrle, a tool for the working of millstones used in Moravia in the 12th century, inspired by the sound of metal scratching stone. (Škrdlík’s grandfather maintained mill machinery.)

Jan Škrdlík was led to music by his mother, a violin teacher and he decided to become a professional musician at the age of 17. His teachers Jan Hališka (a professor at the Ostrava Conservatory) and Miroslav Doležil (a primary school teacher) had studied under Bohuš Heran, a private pupil of Hanuš Wihan, founder of the Czech Quartet. The young violoncellist was thus influenced by one of the leading lights of Czech music in modern times. In 1987-1991 he studied at the Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts, Brno under Professor Bedřich Havlík, a member of the Moravian Quartet. Brno is capital of Moravia, the southern portion of the Czech lands, and Škrdlík felt strongly influenced by Leoš Janáček his fierce native pride in the area and the inspiration he derived from it, as well as by the whole atmosphere of the city. Further development was shaped by Josef Chuchro and Daniel Veis. An opportunity to study under Spanish virtuoso Luis Claret in Barcelona proved a milestone on the path to gathering experience and knowledge. Jan Škrdlík’s musical career is characterised by his openness to new trends and a constant quest for valid options in musical interpretation.

Jan Škrdlík started to take part in competitions in the late 1980s, both as a solo musician and as part of ensembles, and won his first awards. His greatest success was the Silver Medal and the Special Prize for the best rendering of a Beethoven composition at the prestigious International Beethoven Contest in Hradec. Consistently high standards led to being awarded a year’s scholarship visit to Spain in the late 1980s. During his studies in Barcelona, he helped establish the first professional ensemble in Murcia, southern Spain. In 1991, the Czechoslovak Music Foundation awarded him their prize for the promotion of Czech music abroad. Since then, Jan Škrdlík has performed in Europe and beyond, both solo and as part of music ensembles.

Concerts and recordings

The number of concerts that Jan Škrdlík has given over the past twenty years runs easily into four figures. His first public performance took place in spring 1990, shortly after returning from Murcia, in Spain (1988–89), where he had been studying and where he had also helped start a professional ensemble, the first of its kind there. He then toured Czechoslovakia with piano player Pedro Valer Abril, with whom he also recorded Prokofiev’s Piano Sonata No. 9 in C major, Op. 103, in the Olomouc studio of Czech Broadcasting [Český rozhlas]. Some months later he joined the Wallinger Quartet, a highly respected chamber music ensemble, a position that brought with it many opportunities to perform in the Czech Republic and beyond in the early 1990s. The Wallinger Quartet played concerts all over central, western and south-western Europe and performed regularly in the USA. The Wallinger Quartet concerts apart, Jan Škrdlík also performed in violoncello recitals and later became a soloist with various orchestras. The recitals included concerts with the piano played by Renata Ardaševová, among other leading pianists, and concerts with the cembalo played by Barbara Maria Willi. Jan Škrdlík also collaborated with other chamber music ensembles and helped establish, among others, Ardor musicus, the Czech Baroque Trio, the Gideon Trio and Ensemble Messiaen. In 2004 he help establish the ensemble known as the Brno Chamber Soloists ensemble, which specialises in 19th- and 20th-century music. A year later he toured the USA with them as soloist; in the course of six weeks he performed on 35 stages and critics in Miami lauded his performance as “a sensation”.

Škrdlík has recorded for several labels. His CD performance of Bach’s Suites was noted outside the Czech Republic. He recorded in the studios of Czech Broadcasting regularly in the 1990s.

A list of Jan Škrdlík concerts covering the period January 1994 - June 2009 may be found in Povoláním – člověk, biografie violoncellisty Jana Škrdlíka [“Vocation: – Ordinary Man: A Biography of Jan Škrdlík”], written by Radoslav Kvěch.

Films and multimedia concerts

In 2007, the theft of Jan Škrdlík’s violoncello inspired what was possibly the first instrumental classical music video in history. The instrument, a precious product of the craft of Adam Emanuel Homolka in 1842, was stolen from his studio; news of the crime merited a spot on TV news and the violoncello was returned. A year later, this led to the innovative Claude Debussy – Sonate pour violoncelle et piano, set as a short film narrative, with mime, an imaginative performance based on events around the “crime”. A Czech-Slovak team, including Czech film director Milan Růžička, created the film, which Škrdlík later used as part of multimedia concerts; it was employed as back-projection for live performances. Several films made for similar purposes followed.

Social involvement and scholarship

Jan Škrdlík’s social involvement and scholarly activities have had indirect influences on the direction and nature of his music. They fall into three categories.

Teaching

In 1997-2009 Jan Škrdlík taught violoncello and chamber music performance at the Brno Conservatory. Some of his students went on to work with him on the organisation of a variety of musical projects, or became players in ensembles that he led. Further pedagogical activities include teaching violoncello interpretation courses in Murcia, Spain in 2003 and international courses in baroque music in Kelč in 2009 and elsewhere. His teaching aims to support the natural musical development of the student with respect to the development of her/his personality; it is far less concerned with criticism of performance.

After twenty years on the Czech music scene Jan Škrdlík has come to realise that Czech society lacks a wider base of enthusiastic amateur musicians that might promote interest in classical music. Since 2004 he has helped organise interpretation courses in Opočno, and led them, providing a milieu in which amateur musician can play alongside conservatory students and university-trained musicians.

Writing

Jan Škrdlík has written a book of poetry, Tvá slova [“Thy Words”], and several sociologically oriented popular articles, published in Kamínky journal of the Family and Social Care Centre, Brno. He has also written other pieces in Czech and Spanish.

Discography