Robert Kružík is currently the chief conductor of the Bohuslav Martinů Philharmonic in Zlín, a regular guest conductor of the Brno Philharmonic, and from the 2025/2026 season the chief conductor of the Janáček Opera of the National Theatre in Brno, and he belongs to the youngest generation of Czech conductors. However, he got his start as a cellist. “When my family found out that I had a good sense of rhythm and a good ear, they sat me down at the piano, then by the time I turned six, Professor Havlík was teaching me to play the cello. Then at the conservatoire, I simultaneously began to discover the magic of the baton”, recalls the laurate of the Jiří Bělohlávek Prize about his musical beginnings. A graduate of the Brno Conservatoire, he studied cello under Miroslav Zicha and conducting under Stanislav Kummer, then he continued his studies at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, where his conducting teachers were Leoš Svárovský, Charles Olivieri-Munroe, and Lubomír Mátl and his cello teacher was Miroslav Petráš. In the 2012/2013 academic year, he went on a study visit to the Zürcher Hochschule der Künste in Switzerland, where he also pursued both playing and conducting, which he sees as having been very beneficial for his professional career: “It was a great advantage for me to have learned what it’s like to be on the other side of the baton. For example, as a conductor I now have greater empathy towards the players.”
While he is taking the helm of Brno’s Janáček Opera for the 2025/2026 season, his collaboration with the company had already begun during his studied, and it continued thereafter. “As a fresh graduate of the academy, I was incredibly lucky to be able to land on my feet getting professional experience, but it was like taking the wheel of a limousine right after having gotten a driver’s license”, admits the conductor who led many productions there, rehearsing and performing works including Rossini’s opera Le comte Ory, Tchaikovsky’s Pique Dame and Eugene Onegin, Smetana’s Libuše, which was played for the 100th anniversary of the founding of Czechoslovakia, Der Rosenkavalier by Richard Strauss, The Greek Passion by Bohuslava Martinů, and Verdi’s Otello. However, he still continues to conduct not only opera, but also symphonic music. “Symphonic music naturally has its own special splendour. But I’m quite happy that I still haven’t fully chosen which path to devote myself to more. I’m not easy to categorise. So I’m standing between those two wonderful worlds”, said Robert Kružík in an interview for the magazine Harmonie in 2023.
Besides his work already mentioned with opera companies and symphony orchestras, Robert Kružík has been serving for several seasons as the conductor of the National Moravian-Silesian Theatre in Ostrava, and he is working with orchestras including the Czech Philharmonic, the MDR Radio Symphony Orchestra in Leipzig, the National Philharmonic in Warsaw, the Prague Philharmonia, and the Prague Symphony Orchestra. He also receives invitations to important festivals such as Prague Spring, Smetana’s Litomyšl, the Saint Wenceslas Music Festival, and Festival Eufonia.
Although his conducting career continues to develop, he is still devoting himself to the cello. He has been a successful participant at such cello competitions as Prague Spring, the Bohuslav Martinů Foundation Competition, and the Leoš Janáček International Competition in Brno, and he has perfected his playing at several masterclasses led by the cellists Jiří Bárta, Michaela Fukačová, and Raphael Wallfisch. He has also been a participant at conducting masterclasses under Norbert Baxa, Johannes Schlaefli, and David Zinman.
