Milan Dvorak
Milan Dvorak
Milan Dvorak
com/saxplayalong
MILAN DVOŘÁK AND HIS JAZZ PIANO ETUDES
by Milan Franěk
Milan Dvořák1 began playing piano at the age of seven in Prostějov, Czechoslovakia, where, on
6 December 1934, he was born into the family of a violinist and a music-teacher. Later, while
studying at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering in Prague, he pursued music as an amateur in
a student jazz quintet. Upon graduation in 1958, the communist regime ordered him to take a
position as an engineer in a metallurgy combine in the industrial town of Ostrava, probably to
convince him to forget about jazz and draw him closer to the working class. Dvořák disregarded
this instruction and joined a famous Prague big band as pianist. Over time the threats from the
state apparatus came to a stop, and he was free to develop his musical activities.
As a pianist he played, for example, in the prestigious music-theatre Semafor. In the years
1965–90 he led the band accompanying the first lady of Czech chanson, Hana Hegerová, and
from 1980 to 1990 he was the head of the group TV Septet of Czechoslovak television. For
many years he also worked as a professor of composition at the Jaroslav Ježek Conservatoire in
Prague.
Along with playing the piano, Dvořák has also been active as a composer. In addition to
many songs and orchestral pieces, he has written the music to over a dozen films, directed by
Petr Schulhoff, František Vláčil, Dušan Klein and others.
Currently he is a member of the Swing Quintet Prague, plays with the pop and jazz singer
Eva Pilarová, and with the chansonnière Eva Kriz, who became his life-partner after the death of
his wife. He works in continuing close co-operation with the Czech Radio Musical Publishing
House, for which he has written a number of piano albums.
The history of Milan Dvořák’s jazz pieces for piano begins in the 1960s. At that time he was
recording some contemporary popular Czech songs for Czech Radio in his own arrangements
and with his own trio (piano, double-bass and drums). The unusual, slightly jazzy, arrangement
of songs by local composers aroused the interest of an editor at the State Musical Publishing
1 Western readers may wonder whether Milan Dvořák is any relation of the better-known Antonín (he isn’t). In fact, Dvořák
is the fourth-commonest surname in the Czech lands. There’s even another Milan Dvořák prominent in the Czech Republic: a
former professional footballer born only seventeen days earlier, on 19 November 1934.
2
House who, by coincidence, was also the composer of some of the songs being recorded.
Dvořák was asked to transcribe them for solo piano, bringing about a first publication of Piano
Transcriptions in 1963. The idea of writing jazz piano etudes followed later in the late 1960s and,
after the success of the first series in 1971, a second series was born fourteen years later, in 1985.
In the preface to that second volume, Dvořák explains that he retained the title Jazz Piano Etudes
to maintain continuity with the first, although the later one offers a much broader variety of styles
and genres, extending also to rock and pop.
In the creation of these etudes, Dvořák defined several criteria that he tried to observe:
they should be composed so that they are playable even by pianists who play jazz music
only occasionally; further, they should draw the interest of interpreters with their melody,
harmonic structure and rhythmic elements. Probably thanks to these principles, the etudes
have been published in many issues and reprints, but this is the first time that they have been
recorded.
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lower. The piece starts in E minor but then a circle of fifth is applied and the concluding section ends
up on chords consecutively on A major, B major and C sharp major.
Etude No. 24 in D flat major O is permeated by two rhythms: an initial 4/4 metre with 3/8
figurations. In jazz the origins of this polyrhythmic formation go back to the era of ragtime (there
are, of course, many more examples in classical music3) and it is now a compositional practice
frequently encountered in jazz music (such as In the Mood, the Joe Garland tune that Glenn Miller
made famous). The middle section, in B flat minor and a regular 4/4 metre, changes the mood
slightly but then returns to the polyrhythmic pattern in the coda.
The last etude of the first volume is No. 25 in B flat major P. It features a sixteen-bar theme
and written-out improvisation on the given harmony, with a hint of walking bass in the left hand.
The music reaches its climax when it returns to the initial theme, now in full chords. At the end, the
theme reappears in its original form, to which Dvořák adds a short concluding section.
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The Czech pianist Milan Franěk studied at the
Conservatoire in Pilsen and the Academy of
Performing Arts in Prague, at the University of
Music and Performing Arts in Vienna and in
Graz and at the Charles University in Prague. He
also participated in several international piano
master-classes with renowned pianists (Eva Solar-
Kindermann, Williard Schultz, Pierre Jasmin in
Canada, Peter Roggenkamp in Germany, Avo
Kouyoumdian in Austria, and Eugen Indjic
and Livia Rév in France). In 1984 his piano
trio won third prize at the International Radio
Competition ‘Concertino Praga’ and in the year
1988, as a trombonist, he won third prize at the
national wind-instrument competition of music conservatoires in Brno.
Milan has taught at various music institutions and music universities both in the Czech
Republic (the České Budějovice Conservatoire, University of Hradec Králové and, in Prague,
the International School of Performing Arts in Prague, the Jaroslav Ježek Conservatoire and
College and Charles University) and abroad (the Universiti Teknologi MARA, Shah Alam,
Malaysia, and the Vienna Music Academy). He has made several recordings of classical music
for Czech Radio and has given concerts in Austria, China, the Czech Republic, France, Great
Britain, Japan, Lithuania, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Norway and Serbia. Since 2012 he has
conducted piano master-classes at prestigious institutions in many countries in Asia (China,
Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam), and in January
2015 he conducted a master-class with students from various music institutions in South Korea
at the Vienna Music Academy. Later in 2015 he featured the complete Piano Jazz Etudes of
Milan Dvořák in several recitals at the International Music Festival ‘Smetana Days’ in Pilsen
and, for the Petrof Piano Prep. Co., in Tokyo. He has been the President of the European Piano
Teachers Association (EPTA) for the Czech Republic (www.epta-cz.com) since 2010.
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Recorded on 19 and 25 April 2015 in the recording studio of the Pardubice Conservatoire, Czech Republic
Piano: Concert Grand Ant. Petrof Model AP 275
Musical Direction: Jitka Fowler Fraňková
Sound Engineering and Mastering: Antonín Dvořák
Acknowledgements
Milan Franěk would like to express his sincere appreciations to the Pardubice Conservatoire for making this
recording possible in its recording studio and to the Petrof piano factory who provided the latest model of the
concert grand Ant. Petrof Model AP275 for the recording sessions.
TOCC 0319
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Edition No. H5020 Edition No. H 7082
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