Groundbreaking tour: the PKF - Prague Philharmonia in Japan

PKF - Prague Philharmonia is currently on a concert tour in Japan. This is a pilot project carried out under specific conditions; since the outbreak of the pandemic, foreign ensembles have hardly performed there. Therefore, the concerts have been extremely popular with the local audience.

The tour officially kicked off on 18 September with a concert at the Kanagawa Prefectural Music Hall. The successful start was preceded by several months of intensive preparations, four days spent in quarantine and several negative PCR tests. The presence of a foreign orchestra is rather rare in the current situation in Japan. The PKF - Prague Philharmonia concert tour is only possible thanks to extraordinary permission from the Japanese government.

The conductor of the tour is Leoš Svárovský, the outstanding soloists are the Colombian cellist Santiago Cañón-Valencia and the pianists Keigo Mukawa and Kyohei Sorita.

"This year's tour with PKF - Prague Philharmonia is truly groundbreaking and I am looking forward to beautiful and full halls. I am thrilled to be able to promote Czech and European music in Japan even in these complicated times," said conductor Leoš Svárovský.

The PKF - Prague Philharmonia will present to the Japanese audience Bedřich Smetana's symphonic poem Vltava from the cycle My Country, Dvořák's Symphony No. 9 "From the New World" or his Concerto for Cello and Orchestra, Beethoven's Symphony No. 7 and his Overture to Egmont or Sergei Rachmaninoff's Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 2.

The orchestra performs successively in the cities of Yokohama, Tokyo, Takasaki, Shiga and Aichi.

"We see this tour with the orchestra as really special, and we waited until the last minute to get permission from the Japanese government. PKF - Prague Philharmonia confirms its position as one of the most important ambassadors of Czech culture abroad," adds Kateřina Kalistová, the orchestra's director.