Miroslav Kejmar Portrait in Brief

At the tender age of 10 Miroslav Kejmar took the most important decision of his life: he swapped his fiddle for a trumpet. The man “whose lip is a gift from God” (according to one of his teachers) can scarcely have any cause to regret it now.

Not yet 40, citing Adolf Scherbaum and Maurice André as his models, Kejmar's list of recordings does him proud, including as it does such feats as Bach's 2nd Brandenburg Concerto, one of the concertos of J.M. Molter and the first recording of the incredibly difficult concerto by Franziskus Querfort (all on the Panton label). He can be heard in Supraphon recordings of Bach's Suite in D and Handel's Fireworks Music. Apart from the Baroque his other preference is for contemporary works (he quotes Jolivet, Bozza, Arutiunian, Goedicke and Peskin).

He has recorded Joéka Matěj's trumpet concerto (Supraphon) and concerto for trumpet, horn and trombone (Panton), and Petr Eben's Vox clamantis (Panton).

Kejmar's concert schedule is just as busy. With the Czech Philharmonic, where he has been solo trumpet since 1972, he has played the Haydn concerto among other things, and has appeared with other orchestras in Prague, Brno and Bratislava as well as with the Bucharest Philharmonic. He also plays with the Prague Baroque Ensemble, the Prague Brass Soloists and other chamber groups. Even the dance bands of Karel Vlach and Václav Hybs can count on him.

This versatile man with the textbook embouchure comes from Kladno (born 1941), studied with Václav Pařík and Václav Junek in Prague from 1962, and learned his trade in operetta and film orchestras before joining the Czech Philharmonic in 1970. His main instrument is a Bach C; he also plays instruments in Bb, Eb (for Haydn and Hummel) and a Selmer Bb piccolo, which is particularly splendid.

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