Lada Valešová

Lada Valešová’s debut CD of Czech Piano Music Intimate Studies, followed by her second album Dumka on Avie Records label have received universal international critical acclaim. Half Czech and half Russian, and having lived and worked in London for the last twenty years, Lada enjoys exploring and presenting to the public lesser known repertoire with Slavic and middle European links. 

Her latest CD Fata Morgana: Song by Pavel Haas has been released in March 2017 on Resonus Classics label, offering an in-depth exploration of vocal chamber music by Czech Jewish composer Pavel Haas. Masterminded by Valešová, and featuring an impressive line-up of singers and the award-winning Navarra String Quartet, the album has already gained exalted reviews and praise for its concept, and for containing a bench-mark world premiere recording of the unique chamber piece Fata Morgana. 

Lada Valešová graduated from the Prague Conservatoire and Prague Music Academy, followed by the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where she is now a professor. For the last couple of decades she has been introducing young singers to the Russian and Czech Vocal repertoire in her popular class. She is also in great demand by the UK and international opera companies as a language coach in Russian and Czech operatic repertoire. 

She was taught by late pedagogue Valentina Kameníková, one of the most prominent pianists in former Czechoslovakia, and Eugene Indjic, pupil of Artur Rubinstein. She refined and broadened her pianistic horizons during her studies in London with late pianists James Gibb and Paul Hamburger, and earned recognition from artists such as Sir Georg Solti and Sir Charles Mackerras. Lada has performed in Europe, and as far as New Zealand. In UK she has performed at the Three Choirs Festival in Hereford, Oxford Lieder Festival, Dumfries & Galloway Arts Festival, Warwick International Music Festival, and others. She has performed at the Wigmore Hall, St. John’s Smith Square and at the Lindbury Studio, ROH. She has featured on the BBC Radio 3, Classic FM, Radio New Zealand, Czech Radio Vltava and RTÉ Radio 1 Arts Show, Ireland. 

In March 2017 Lada has made her Brussels debut, performing in a highly-anticipated production of Janáček’s Diary of One who Disappeared, which also includes a world premiere composition by Annelies van Parys. The production is directed by Ivo van Hove, the world renowned director, and the founder of the Toneelgroep Amsterdam Theatre Company, and features the British tenor Ed Lyon in the main role. The production will now go on a European tour, and will be performed also at the International Music Festival Beijing, China, in 2018, and in London’s Hackney Empire in January 2018.