DANIEL MATEJČA

GENERIC INTERVIEW

Album detail
Catalogue number: SU 4370-2

We met with the violinist Daniel Matejča just a few days before the release of his new album presenting two major works of 20th-century Russian music – the First Violin Concerto by Dmitri Shostakovich and the First Violin Concerto by Sergei Prokofiev. Matejča won the 2022 Eurovision Young Musicians competition with Shostakovich, and the critics reacted enthusiastically to his debut album with Ysaÿe’s sonatas (2023). It was therefore natural for him to return to the Shostakovich concerto that was written for David Oistrakh. Prokofiev’s concerto, playful and contrasting, creates a striking contrast with Shostakovich’s dramatic work. Matejča excels in both concertos with energy, technique, and depth of feeling. The conductor Tomáš Netopil conjures an orchestral soundscape that sensitively accompanies every note of the soloist.


Daniel, Dmitri Shostakovich’s First Violin Concerto played a key role in your international breakthrough. What led you to return to it for the new album, and how has your interpretation changed since the days of the Eurovision Young Musicians competition?

This time, I knew I would have to show myself doing what is dearest to me, not choosing a programme of pieces that are guaranteed to work, but taking a risk, presenting myself with a work that springs from within me. After a long discussion with Jan Tengler, now a good friend, we arrived at the conclusion that Shostakovich’s First Violin Concerto would be the right way to go. When I was younger, I was convinced that I understood the complications of Shostakovich’s life reflected in his First Violin Concerto. Now that I’m older, I understand it a bit more, but I’ll never (thank God) be 100 % able to grasp the depth of sorrow that Shostakovich left us in his music. To me, that’s what makes the composition unique. Each time I play the concerto, I get myself into a state that is hard to describe, unfortunately. I’d like to claim that one can really get a feel for the horror of those days, though I did not live through them. No other violin concerto evokes such powerful emotion in me, so I decided to immortalise my take on Shostakovich’s message on the new album. And that’s a great honour for me.


Heard alongside Shostakovich on the recording is Sergei Prokofiev’s First Violin Concerto, a work of contrasts that is playful and constantly changing. What was your approach to the album’s dramaturgy, and how did you manage to balance the differing musical worlds of the two composers?

Prokofiev’s First Violin Concerto was the first work I performed at the Rudolfinum in Prague. It was at the 2020 Concertino Praga Competition, to which I remain grateful to this day for the experience of a lifetime. The concerto is overflowing with beauty that contrasts with quite a lot of sarcasm and almost Soviet brutality. I think some parts of the work remain unsurpassed as far as the violin literature in general is concerned. So when putting together my first album with orchestra, it was clear that I would take into account these two works, both of which have played a very important role in my growth. The two concertos constantly reemerge in my professional career and my personal life.


Your close collaboration with the conductor Tomáš Netopil is clearly evident on the recording. How did working with him go in the studio, and what do you think he brought to the final result and the overall atmosphere of the recording?

In 2023, Tomáš and I performed the Shostakovich concerto at the opening concert of the Lednice-Valtice Music Festival. I enjoyed working with him so much that I never considered any other option for my future album. I have nothing but gratitude towards Tomáš Netopil; it was thanks to his incredible abilities that the process went so smoothly with almost no problems. Working with the excellent Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, the directors Milan Puklický and Jiří Gemrot, the sound engineer Rostislav Supa, and Professor Ivan Štraus, the experience was nearly as valuable as the resulting album. If even one person had been missing from that team, the recording would have been far from fulfilling its full potential. I’m enormously grateful to them all for their cooperation and contributions, and I firmly hope we will again be working together as a team one day.

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