Open House Prague invites you to a concert in honor of the architect Pavel Janák
To celebrate the 140th anniversary of the birth of the architect Pavel Janák, the Open House Prague organization, in cooperation with the international chamber music festival EuroArt Prague, and with the participation of the Autoklub České republiky, is preparing a celebratory concert called Unity of Time and Place in Music.
Pavel Janák (1882–1956) is among the most important architects of the first half of the 20th century in our country, he collaborated with, for example, Jan Kotěra and Josef Gočár. “Among Janák’s most famous realizations in Prague are the Adria Palace, the Juliš Hotel or the Husův sbor in Vinohrady, buildings that we opened to the public again this year as part of the 8th Open House Prague festival“, says the director of Open House Prague Klára Veselá and adds: “Due to the great interest, we have also included tours of some buildings in the year-round program of guided walks, and we are pleased that through the concert we can let interest once again look into the beautiful representative premises of the Autoklub ČR.”
The architect Pavel Janák is also the author of the club house of the Autoklub ČR, a modern social palace, which today is a cultural monument. “In the 1920s, Janák designed the reconstruction of the building in a purist style, which included the extension of another floor, the basement or the Smetana hall. The Automobile Club of the Czech Republic, whose history dates back to 1904, has been based in these representative premises since 1929“, he adds Michal Sedivy, co-organizer of the event from Open House Prague. Outside of Prague, the crematorium in Pardubice is certainly worth mentioning. At the end of the 1930s, Janák was also appointed architect of Prague Castle.
In addition to the architect Pavel Janák, the concert will also commemorate the anniversary of the composer Bohuslav Martinů. It is precisely on December 8 that 132 years will pass since the composer’s birth. “The basic idea of the concert was not only to commemorate the important anniversaries of the architect Pavel Janák and the composer Bohuslav Martinů, but also the idea was placed for the listeners as added value and the possibility to discover the treasures of our architectural work in a mutual dialogue with music,” says the director of the EuroArt Prague festival Josef Kekula and adds: “Martinů’s Seventh String Quartet is a perfect example of the composer’s neoclassical efforts, Novák’s rarely performed Second String Quartet is based on other musical sources, but it is an unusual masterpiece and an early composition by Josef Suzná, with which he confirmed his unusual talent.”
Concert The unity of time and place in music is produced on Wednesday 7 December 2022 at 7.30 pm in the clubhouse of the Auto Club of the Czech Republic. Richard Gironi, executive director of the Autoklub ČR, will speak about the architecture of the building and Janák’s work.