The opening concert of the Prague Spring Festival will take place on Wednesday, May 28^th, 2025, at 9:00 PM in the Smetana Hall of the Prague Municipal House and will be performed by the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra. This concert marks a double debut, featuring two young musicians who are stepping into the spotlight for the first time: the evening's conductor and soloist. They will make their debut in front of a major orchestra and a large audience, showcasing their talent and professionalism.

Conductor Jan Sedláček is one of the most promising young Czech musicians of his generation. In January 2024, he won the conducting competition of the Karlovy Vary Symphony Orchestra, and in May he became Jakub Hrůša's assistant for two performances of Bedřich Smetana's opera Libuše, alongside the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra.

For the evening concert on Wednesday, May 28^th, 2025, Jan Sedláček has put together a program featuring works by Leonard Bernstein, Sergei Prokofiev, and Antonín Dvořák.

Leonard Bernstein's Divertimento for Orchestra was composed in 1981 in order to celebrate the centenary of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Bernstein had a deep emotional connection to the aforementioned orchestra, and he even dedicated the orchestra this piece with the words: "With affection to the Boston Symphony Orchestra for its 100^th birthday".

Next, the audience will have the opportunity to hear Japanese violinist Tsukushi Sasaki, winner of the 2024 Prague Spring International Music Competition. She will make her debut as a soloist with a program that features Sergei Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No. 1 in D major, Op. 19. Composed in 1917 - a year marked by the upheaval of the Russian October Revolution, which Prokofiev witnessed in St. Petersburg and later in the Caucasus - the concerto premiered in Paris on October 18^th, 1923, with Marcel Darrieux as soloist under the baton of Serge Koussevitzky. The audience that night was a veritable who's who of Paris's 1920s artistic elite, including Pablo Picasso, Anna Pavlova, Karol Szymanowski, Arthur Rubinstein, Joseph Szigeti, and Nadia Boulanger.

The concert at the Smetana Hall will conclude with the Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major, Op. 10 by Antonín Dvořák, performed by the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra under Jan Sedláček's guidance. This symphony, composed in just three movements rather than the traditional four, held a special place in Dvořák's heart. However, despite its undeniable musical qualities, it has remained overshadowed by his later orchestral masterpieces.