Culture | Topic Archive

Václav Hudeček got his first violin at the age of five and at 15 he performed at London’s Royal Albert Hall. The exceptionally talented young man studied at the Prague Music Conservatory and was one of David Oistrakh’s last students. In a career spanning more than half a century Hudeček has performed the world over, playing in the most prestigious venues and appearing at festivals in Europe, Japan, and Australia. Hudeček has also presented master classes in Canada, Germany, and Japan, and runs an annual academy for promising young Czech

The Dvořák American Heritage Association is one of a number of organisations based at the Bohemian National Hall in New York. Its impressive Dvořák Room houses a rich array of items connected to the composer, who did ground-breaking work during a stay in the city in the 1890s.

Czech pop-singer Václav Neckář is perhaps best-known for his role of Jiří Hrma in the Oscar-winning film Closely Watched Trains by Jiří Menzel. He enjoyed his biggest popularity as a singer in the 1960s and 1970s as part of the Golden Kids trio. Despite recently turning 75, Neckář continues to perform and sell out concert halls all around the country.

Cross the Line is the title of a new exhibition of Czech and Slovak contemporary glass design that runs from Sunday in the Czech House Jerusalem. The exhibition is a joint project organized in cooperation with the Czech Centre Tel Aviv and the Museum of Glass and Jewellery in Jablonec nad Nisou. I asked the head of Czech Centre in Tel-Aviv, Robert Mikoláš, to tell me more about the exhibition:

In 2017 director Marie Dvořáková followed the likes of Spike Lee, Robert Zemeckis and her compatriot Jan Svěrák in winning the Student Academy Award for her film Who’s Who in Mycology. When we spoke in New York, the filmmaker told me the short had a long gestation – and that she was currently working on not one but three new projects. But I first asked Marie Dvořáková what had drawn her to film in the first place.

Foreign filmmakers and TV crews spent nearly 5 billion crowns last year in the Czech Republic, a jump of nearly two billion crowns compared to 2017. With the state having paid out some 800 million crowns through an incentives scheme, the return on investment is solid. But competition is fierce – and heating up.

Czech folk-rock band Divokej Bill recently celebrated 20 years of existence with 18,000 fans cheering in a sold-out O2 arena. The band, which hails from the town of Úvaly near Prague, was founded by singer and guitarist Václav Bláha. Since 1998 it has released 13 studio records as well as a number of singles and music videos.

The founders of a project to educate Czech schoolchildren about HIV and AIDS, named in honour of the late Queen frontman Freddie Mercury, plan to take it worldwide. The phenomenal success of the new biopic “Bohemian Rhapsody” has raised the project’s profile ahead of its global launch – which its founders say is a happy coincidence.

The band Lake Malawi will represent the Czech Republic at this year’s Eurovision Song Contest, to be held in Tel Aviv in May. The indie-pop band, formed in 2013 by the singer and guitarist Albert Černý, garnered the most votes in the Czech national round, leaving behind seven other finalists. I spoke to Lake Malawi’s frontman about their success and I started by asking why they decided to take part in the Eurovision contest:

Award-winning screenwriter and director Ivan Fíla this summer added another titular feather to his cap – that of best-selling author – following the runaway success of his historical novel about the one Prague Spring leader who refused to sign the Moscow Protocol legitimising the Soviet invasion and onset of “normalisation”.