Thirty-eight-year-old cellist Tomáš Jamník does not quite fit into the common idea of a classical music virtuoso. Instead of cultivating his own star image, he invests time and energy in things that always benefit the people around him.
Thanks for the initiative Serious interest years ago, he revived the tradition of home concerts, he devotes himself to young professional musicians at the Academy of Chamber Music and for the past five years also at Ševčík Academy. He named it after the Czech teacher of the violin school Otakar Ševčík, who he lived between 1852 and 1934, musicians from all over the world came to see him in the south of Bohemia. Jamník is now looking for his tracks in America.
Thanks to a Fulbright scholarship, the cellist and his family went on a six-month internship in New York to devote himself to a topic he had been thinking about for a long time. “I knew that string players here knew Ševčík’s method, but I had no idea how much. The vast majority practice according to his method and often know it better than we do in Europe,” he describes.
This is well illustrated by a story from the first day at New York’s Juilliard School, where Tomáš Jamník now teaches cello and lectures. “The professor I’m assisting with showed me around the school and we also looked at the Juilliard Store, where you can buy a mug with the school’s logo, their memorabilia, but also sheet music or other music literature. I opened the compartment for cellists and there it was a whole series of Ševčíks, sheet music editions, including the one I prepared years ago for the Bärenreiter publishing house. I also bought one to have something to show at lectures. I’ve already given away the complete set of mine,” the cellist smiles.
He encountered the methodology created by Otakar Ševčík, just like every student of the string field, from the very beginning. But only when within Karajan Academy played with the Berlin Philharmonic, he realized what an exceptional personality Czech music had in Ševčík. Many Philharmonic cellists asked about the Czech pedagogue and he had no answers. Thus began the journey that today leads through music universities in New York, Boston, Kansas City, Michigan or Indiana. At them, Jamník lectures, observes the differences between the Czech and American string schools, and also searches for the lost opus in which Ševčík summarized his know-how.
Otakar Ševčík was born around the middle of the 19th century in Horažďovice in West Bohemia. He was an excellent violinist, but above all a pedagogue, to whom students flocked from all over the world in his strongest years. Shortly after graduating, he became a concertmaster in Salzburg, but after the crisis in 1873 he took refuge in Ukraine, where he taught and honed the basics of his method for 17 years.
Otakar Ševčík, founder of modern violin methodology, on a walk in Písek, undated. | Photo: CTK
“When he returned back to Prague, his methodology began to spread through the press and he became super famous. And not only him, but also his students, for example Jan Kubelík. This approach was unprecedented, it was the first comprehensive system that treats the study of an instrument strictly analytically,” explains Tomáš Jamník.
Thus, at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, Ševčík’s gifted students spread across America, and he himself became a brand. Private studios and conservatories are opening, boasting of teaching Ševčík’s method. Ševčík himself came to the USA for the first time in 1921 to become a full professor at the conservatory in Ithaca, already founded and led by his former student. After that, he returns across the ocean two more times, to three places: New York, Chicago and Boston. “He created a revolutionary manual. He approached any technical problem analytically. He phased the movement of the hands while playing the instrument into micro-elements, broke them down technically and created exercises for each of those minute movements. Thanks to this, the player can understand the instrument as such and perceive each movement with the finger. I I call it instrumental yoga,” explains Jamník.
According to him, some musicians perceive Ševčík negatively precisely because of the technical approach, which at first glance seems to prevail in his method. “But that’s a huge mistake. Ševčík spoke of music as something universal, he spoke of the musician’s soul. And technology was and should only be a means to absolute independence,” Jamník objects.
A large part of the exercises created by Otakar Ševčík was published in print, but one is missing. It’s called the School of Virtuous Techniques and it’s a kind of upgrade or summary of everything the teacher has been working on. He himself called it the pinnacle of his method. But this work, which he completed in America, was never published.
“Sevčík submitted the works to the same publisher that George Gershwin had. We’re talking about the 1920s of the last century, which is the time of the advent of sound film. And Warner Bros. as four brothers who borrowed a camera from dad and started making movies, that business they got so popular that suddenly they needed a lot of music for their films. And they started buying publishing houses, because they had the rights to the music. This was a very practical thing, they avoided huge sums for constant payments. And that’s how Ševčík’s practice came under Warner Bros.” says Jamník.
Ševčík is said to have tried several times to get his writings back from the publisher, because he was concerned that his method be published and spread among students. Although he was paid for his work and had a signed contract, it lacked a date when his School of Virtuoso Technique was to be published. Because of the error in the contract, he had no leverage.
“It’s very complicated,” says Tomáš Jamník. “I am also reconstructing other moments here. Wherever Ševčík was, who he met, these are pleasant matters. But the most important thing, finding his unpublished notebooks, I would compare that to searching for Ševčík in New York.”
Many musicologists there are convinced that the files no longer exist, and at the same time, it is difficult to move anywhere because it is the property of Warner Bros. “There is supposedly a warehouse of theirs here in New York, in which perhaps these papers described by Ševčík still lie in a box. The problem is that the warehouse has been moved several times and Warner, as a private company, does not give access to it. The last time it was opened to a few music scholars in the 70s of the last century. And those scientists described a space with hundreds of boxes full of manuscripts, among which were unknown works, but also the music of George Gershwin. Perhaps Ševčík will be there somewhere,” the cellist muses.
In his search, he came into contact with one of these musicologists. He allegedly refused to tell him anything because it is a sensitive matter. At the same time, there could be materials in the warehouse that do not have a well-treated rights issue, and the Warners may be waiting until they can handle them themselves, Jamník thinks.
The probability that he will find Ševčík’s lost work is therefore small. “But it is,” answers the musician, who doesn’t like to put up with the fact that there isn’t a path leading to something.
Violinists Josef Špaček and Tomáš Jamník opened the American Spring festival last year with Bohuslav Martinů’s three-movement Duet for violin and cello No. 2. | Video: American Spring
In the coming weeks, Tomáš Jamník intends to research in the Library of Congress in Washington, he will fly to Los Angeles, where he has scouted another archive, and he will talk with musicologists from Santa Barbara.
Apart from that, of course, he works out and plays to keep fit. “Josef Špaček and I played a program from our Paths album at the Bohemian National Hall, I was also very pleased to work with the SEM ensemble of conductor Petr Kotík. And I joined the network of home concerts here and almost every week I have a recital in different neighborhoods from Brooklyn to Manhattan ,” describing.
“They are wonderful places – apartments with a view of New York lit up. I like it, a big sleeping city. Paradoxically, it brings me peace of mind. I get to meet interesting people, for example, now a music fan who bought a Steinway piano from Carnegie Hall. And I’m also invited to play at a home concert by Josef Mašín, who lives in California. I really didn’t plan for such experiences,” he reflects.
Meanwhile, last week he opened a new concert series Serious Interest in the Prague concert and exhibition hall Atrium in Žižkov. After returning to the Czech Republic, he will have a concert at the festival Prague spring, where he will be accompanied by the Symphony Orchestra of the Capital City of Prague FOK under the baton of Alena Jelínková on May 22 in the Dvořák Hall of the Rudolfinum. Jamník will present himself in Capriccio for cello and orchestra of the 20th century Czech classic by Jan Novák.
The Ševčík summer academy will be held for the fifth time this year, the theme of which will be folk music. “Ševčík considered folk songs to be one of his main sources and he knew that the source must be visited regularly. So we will do the same,” concludes Tomáš Jamník.
Video: Tomáš Jamník plays Dvořák at the Prague Dvořák festival
In Dvořák’s Prague, Tomáš Jamník played the composer’s early Concerto for cello and piano in A major accompanied by the SOČR under the baton of James Judd. | Video: Dvořák’s Prague
