Chief Conductor

ROBERT KRUŽÍK

Robert Kružík is one of the youngest generation of Czech conductors. At the age of only 25 he was offered a post from the 2015-2016 season at the Brno National Theatre's Janáček Opera Company by its artistic director Jiří Heřman, where he and the Brno National Theatre's director Martin Glaser staged a number of successful productions including The Queen of Spades with the legendary Soňa Červená, Rossini's Le comte Ory, Eugene Onegin, andSmetana's Libuše at the Brno Exhibition Grounds, which was the most highly acclaimed production of the year and also featured him as cello soloist. His further successful productions included Bohuslav Martinů's Greek Passion which received  an international Opera Awards nomination, and his outstanding interpretations of two of the most challenging operatic works -  Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier  and Verdi's Otello.  Among his other major accomplishments is his work with the Brno National Theatre's Ballet Company on a number of productions.

Since the 2021-2022 season he has been Chief Conductor of the Bohuslav Martinů Philharmonic Orchestra, and since the 2018-2019 season Permanent Guest Conductor with the Brno Philharmonic Orchestra, where his outstanding talent has been displayed in the Orchestra's symphony concerts. Specialising in 19th- and 20th-century music, his work with the Bohuslav Martinů Philharmonic has included a series of top-class concerts. In his post at the Moravian-Silesian National Theatre in Ostrava  from 2016-2019 he staged his own interpretation of Verdi's La Traviata and also conducted a string of other operatic works such as Bohuslav Martinů's Three Wishes, Smetana's The Secret and The Bartered Bride, and Mozart's La Clemenza di Tito. He made his debut at the National Theatre in Prague with Verdi's La Traviata, where he also conducted Dvořák's The Jacobin.

His performances with the Brno Philharmonic Orchestra include  Kabeláč's 'Dramatic' Symphony No. 5 in B flat minor and Suk's Asrael symphony. He has worked with a whole range of orchestras both in this country and abroad, such as the Czech Philharmonic, the Slovak Philharmonic, the PKF-Prague Philharmonia, the FOK Prague Symphony Orchestra, the Czech Radio Symphony Orchestra, Sinfonia Varsovia, the Ostrava-based Janáček Philharmonic Orchestra and the Leipzig-based MDR-Sinfonieorchester. Eminent soloists with whom he has worked included the violinists Esther Yoo, Josef Špaček, Jan Mráček and Jiří Vodička, the cellists Raphael Wallfisch and Andrei Ionițǎ, Grammy holder Sumi Jo, Kateřina Kněžíková, Sung Kiu Park, the  brilliant trumpeter Reinhold Friedrich and others. He has conducted at the Mladá Praha Festival, the St Wenceslas Music Festival in Ostrava, the Smetana Festival in Litomyšl, the Festiwal Eufonie in Warsaw and in many prestigious music venues. In May 2020 he made his debut at the Prague Spring Festival with the Czech Radio Symphony Orchestra. Since 2020 he has been passing down his experience to a new generation of conductors in his teaching role at the Janáček Academy of Music in Brno. In that same year he won the Jiří Bělohlávek Prize awarded to young Czech artists up to the age of 30 who have achieved outstanding success in their field, developing the tradition of Czech music-making at home and abroad.