Eva Krestová began her musical career as a violinist, studying first at the conservatoires in Brno and Prague, then graduating from the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague under the guidance of Jindřich Pazdera. Already as a student, she had a passion for playing chamber music, and she perfected her skills in that discipline under such members of renowned ensembles as Niklas Schmidt (Trio Fontenay), Jerry Horner (Fine Arts Quartet), and Ivan Klánský (Guarneri Trio Prague). She was known to us as a violinist first with the Puella Trio, which she later left to begin her career in the world-famous Pavel Haas Quartet. During four years of playing second violin in that quartet, she appeared in the world’s most famous concert halls (Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, Herkulessaal), and she won a Gramophone Award.
However, it was necessary to move on, and another path appeared very quickly on the viola. “Back then, my husband [violinist Radim Kresta] was playing in a piano trio, and he came up with something of an idea. Once he brought a violin home from a luthier, and he said: ‘Come play in a piano quartet with us!’ … I tried playing the viola, first for a few minutes, then for an hour, and suddenly I found that I couldn’t stop”, says Eva Krestová. She was entirely intoxicated by the instrument that she says has “more breadth of soul” than the violin. At first she was making appearances at the same time as both a violinist and a violist, but now she seldom plays the violin. This was also aided by her professional engagements, first for two seasons with the Prague Philharmonia, then for a year at Prague’s National Theatre. From there, her path took her to the position of principal violist of the Czech Philharmonic, where she has been working since 2021.
The story of her discovery of the viola has also played an important part in the world of chamber music. The Josef Suk Piano Quartet was formed under the leadership of Radim Kresta, and the group has enjoyed many successes at international competitions, the most important being their victory at the ACM Premio Trio di Trieste in Italy. They have been performing with success for more than a decade at domestic and foreign festivals, and they were honoured with the 2013 Czech Chamber Music Society Award.
Besides playing in orchestras and chamber music and raising a family (two children), Eva Krestová also makes occasional solo appearances. Her partners have been, for example, Virtuosi Italiani, the Prague Philharmonia, the Pilsen Philharmonic, and the Moravian Chamber Orchestra, of which she was the concertmaster for several years while studying at the conservatoire. Her playing in chamber ensembles has been captured on a number of recordings (Supraphon, Arco diva); she has also recorded for the BBC, the Japanese television network NHK, and Czech Television.
