At the age of twenty-seven, the piano virtuoso Marek Kozák has achieved a series of impressive results in a wide range of competitions, including some of the most prestigious ones. His most recent honors include winning the title Talent of the Year at the fourth annual Classic Prague Awards. His name is almost always remembered as a semifinalist in the Fryderyk Chopin International Piano Competition in Warsaw, the top piano contest in its discipline worldwide, or with his success at the prestigious Prague Spring competition a year later in 2016 (2nd prize and recognition for his performance of the contemporary composition The Jongleur by Adam Skoumal). In 2018, he won the first prize as well as the audience prize at the European Piano Competition in Bremen. Last year he was a finalist at the Busoni competition in Bolzano.
Critics have consistently praised his flawless technique, his sense of proportion and gradation, his wide range of expression, deep musicality and faithfulness to the musical notation. Marek Kozák, a graduate of the piano class of Prof. Ivan Klánský at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, has certainly made a splash in the Czech piano scene.
Marek Kozák already showed extraordinary talent when attending the Children´s Art School in Brušperk. He soon discovered further skills as an organist and composer. He studied both instruments at the Janáček Conservatory in Ostrava – the piano with Monika Tugendliebová and the organ with Martina Zelová. He attended numerous masterclasses led by world-famous virtuosos, such as Eugen Indjic, Murray Parahia or Garrick Ohlsson. He has worked with a number of leading Czech orchestras and regularly performs abroad. His participation in the Debut series of Prague Spring Festival in 2018 was a grand success. That same year he released his first "signature" CD with the works of Haydn, Chopin, Franck, Rachmaninoff and Skoumal.
In February 2020 he performed for the first time with the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra and caused a stir with the practically unknown Piano Concerto in D minor by Vítězslava Kaprálová. Despite this year’s hamstrung concert season, Marek Kozák can boast extraordinarily successful performances at two major festivals in the Czech Republic: he appeared with solo recitals at Smetana’s Litomyšl and at the Dvořák Prague Festival, where he played Dvořák’s compositions in the festival’s project "Antonín Dvořák’s Complete Works for Solo Piano".
Besides teaching at the Grammar and Music School of the Capital City of Prague since 2017, Marek Kozák has a clear focus on the interpretation of Chopin, while also excelling at contemporary music – a fact that is easily evidenced by the award he received at the competition in Bremen. Concert stages are graced with his elegant interpretative style, and audiences are thrilled by his ability to "present with great humility and without ostentation that which the composer wished to express".