Jaroslav Kroft

Biography

“I’m most inspired by conductors who keep the talking to a minimum.”

The violist Jaroslav Kroft studied at the Prague Conservatoire under Professor Lubomír Malý. He joined the Czech Philharmonic in 1986. “My father and two uncles played here, and one of them, Josef, was even the concertmaster, so my path to the Czech Philharmonic was clear already at five years of age”, he says. Above all, he recalls playing Mahler’s symphonies with Václav Neumann, Beethoven’s Ninth with Leonard Bernstein, Má vlast with Wolfgang Sawallisch, and Verdi’s Requiem with Giuseppe Sinopoli. Sinopoli thrilled him especially by showing everything instead of talking.

Jaroslav Kroft’s interest in chamber music led him to establish the Czech Philharmonic Collegium, with which he gave concerts at home and abroad for several years. At two-year intervals, he tours Japan, where he appears in the same halls as the Czech Philharmonic, and he has long served as the chief guest of the festival Berlin-Prag for six concerts per year. He collaborates with Czech soloists including Jana Boušková, Olga Jelínková (now a soloist with the Leipzig Opera), Lubomír Brabec, and Jitka Hosprová.

He has collaborated on several important recordings for the Supraphon, Sony, Venkow, Arc Music, Waldmann, and Artesmon labels, and on Czech Radio he gave premieres of works by Jan Novák (Odarum concentus), Zdeněk Lukáš (Písek Serenade), and Ivan Kurz. For the album Proměny (Transformations) made with the band Čechomor, he received a Multi-Platinum Disc.

A lover of all music other than brass bands, he likes cycling to cozy spots under chestnut trees for a mug of good beer”.