2024-05-07 07:14:32
The year 2004. On the stage of the Dvořák Hall of the Prague Rudolfinum stands a young man with a baton and a graduation concert, concluding his studies at the Faculty of Music and Dance of the AMU. He is twenty-three and chose the difficult funeral symphony Asrael by Josef Suk.
The same place twenty years later. With the New Year’s concert, the Czech Philharmonic symbolically begins the colossal project of the Year of Czech Music. The baton is held by the chief conductor of the Bamber Symphony Orchestra, principal guest conductor of Rome’s National Academy of Saint Cecilia, director-designate of London’s Royal Opera Covent Garden, honorary member of the Royal Academy of Music and recent winner of the Bavarian State Prize. It’s the same conductor, with the same youthful, boyish smile. Jakub Hrůša.
The twenty years that separate these moments are, in retrospect, filled with a consistently built career. It seems incredibly straightforward.
Certainly, being a student of the famous conductor Jiří Bělohlávek not only brought Hrůš an advantage in the form of important contacts, but no agent would take on a young budding artist just at the intercession of an authority. And no prestigious orchestra would repeatedly invite a budding star if she didn’t prove herself.
Visitors to this year’s Prague Spring festival will be able to convince themselves of Hrůš’s qualities again, where on May 18 he will present himself at the head of the National Academy of St. Cecilia. In addition, on May 28 and 30, he will conduct a concert performance of the opera Libuše by Bedřich Smetana performed by the Czech Philharmonic and leading singers.
Without ambition
Already in 2004, a worker from the world agency IMG was listening in the audience, who immediately offered Hrůš cooperation.
Jakub Hrůša currently lives straddling the English Channel. | Photo: Musacchio, Ianniello e Pasqualini
Not that the conductor skipped the stage of conducting amateur, student and regional orchestras – he managed to do this during his studies and, after all, he still works with the Czech Student Philharmonic. He started in his native Brno. The son of a musical architect attended a music school from an early age. Today, of course, he can play the piano, which is a must for a conductor, but he also learned to play the trombone or the flute.
When reading biographies and interviews, Hrůša appears as one of those precocious intellectual youngsters whose passion was literature and – in this case – classical music. Already as a high school student, he regularly went to concerts of the Brno Philharmonic. “I was the type of teenager who experiences tragic concepts rather than humor,” he put it himself.
Besides music, he thought about languages and rights. But since he got to the AMU in Prague without any problems even before his matriculation, there was no reason to doubt.
Jiří Bělohlávek is mentioned everywhere as his teacher. Although they were united by a strong friendship, Hrůša never forgets to mention the pedagogue Radomil Eliška, who led the conductors’ seminar at the academy. “I will never be grateful enough to him for inviting me to apply for the Prague Spring competition barely two or three months after starting my studies,” he recalls. He went into it without ambition – he was the only one who had not yet experienced what it was like to stand in front of a professional body.
The year was 2000, and an eighteen-year-old first-year student caught the eye of an international competition. He didn’t win, he “only” received an honorable mention, the prize for the youngest and most successful Czech participant, but he left an impression. “I understood that I had impressed a lot of people and they would be watching to see how things would develop with me. I was standing in front of a professional orchestra for the first time ever and it was encouraging to know that what I want to do is not only my personal dream, but also has an objective response,” he says as always a precisely wording musician.
With hindsight and after many years of experience abroad, he praises his studies at the Prague University. “The leadership of the conducting department made it compulsory for each student to have their own full-year concert – starting from the second year of study. A great experience that aspiring conductors do not get anywhere in the world. We worked with a different ensemble every year, for example in Hradec, Budějovice, Pilsen, and participated my later orchestra in Zlín,” he recalls. “They threw us in the water and we had to swim like it happens in practice.”
He completed a six-month postgraduate course in Berlin and rounded off his “apprentice years” by participating in competitions in Zagreb and Paris. “However, these were not major steps in my career. Paris brought me a job opportunity, I started working as a guest conductor with the Orchester Philharmonique de Radio France, but I cannot say that without it I would not be what I am today. And now that I work in parallel in many countries and I can compare, I’m glad that I studied and got my first opportunities in the Czech Republic. It was a great foundation,” he states.
Jakub Hrůša devotes a great deal of intellectual effort to the preparation of scores, reflections on the composer, the work, the epoch and the context. | Photo: Musacchio, Ianniello e Pasqualini
Orchestra founded by refugees
After three years of leading the Prague Student Orchestra, it was time for debuts. The year 2004 was a turning point for Jakub Hrůša. In the autumn, he performed for the first time with the Czech Philharmonic. A year later, he performed with the Czech Radio Symphony Orchestra for the first time at Prague Spring. The engagement in Paris with the conductor Myung-Whun Chung falls into the 2005/06 season.
In 2008, he performed for the first time at the Glyndebourne Opera Festival in England, a summer show embodying the best British tradition. He traveled back and forth with the entire company for three years as the director of the Glyndebourne on Tour project, which takes local productions to other destinations.
At home, an ensemble led by Kaspar Zehnder, the Prague Chamber Philharmonic, today the Prague Philharmonia, was waiting for him at home. Their recordings, which were created during Hrůš’s seven-year tenure at the helm, still radiate freshness and spirit.
Hrůša subsequently tried out the role of principal guest conductor with the London Philharmonia Orchestra and also in Japan with the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony. His longest engagement so far came in 2016, when he was sent to lead the Bamber Symphony Orchestra.
The exceptional orchestra was created by post-war refugees from Germany and Prague and has only had five chief conductors since its founding. Even in Hrůš’s case, it won’t be a momentary acquaintance: he has just extended his engagement in Bavaria until 2029. “We have so many plans that not even a few lives would be enough,” Hrůš is excited about the collaboration. However, he goes to Bamberg alone for work: a family with two children found the background and ideal home in London.
In his career so far, he has not only made his debut, but also repeatedly returns to the bodies that make up the top of the world scene. If possible, they try to present Czech music, the unheard music. So, for example, with the Berlin Philharmonic, he performed Bohuslav Martinů’s Violin Concerto, which had never been performed before, or Miloslav Kabeláč’s Mysterium of Time.
When and where
Jakub Hrůša will perform three times at this year’s Prague Spring. First, on May 18, in the Municipal House, he will perform with the Roman orchestra of the National Academy of St. Cecilia, of which he is the principal guest conductor. On the program are Piero della Francesca’s Frescoes by Bohuslav Martinů, George Gerhswin’s Piano Concerto, in which he will accompany Kirill Gerstein, and Symphonic Dances for Large Orchestra by Sergei Rachmaninoff.
Subsequently, on May 28 and 30 in the Dvořák Hall, Rudolfin Hrůš will present the opera Libuše by Bedřich Smetana in concert with the Czech Philharmonic, thereby contributing to the Year of Czech Music in the Prague Spring. Kateřina Kněžíková, Adam Plachetka, Martin Bárta or Richard Samek sing. The orchestra will be accompanied by the Prague Philharmonic Choir conducted by Lukáš Vasilek.
In 2019, he appeared for the first time before the Vienna Philharmonic, with whom he has since prepared orchestral and opera programs. The Vienna Orchestra is the resident ensemble of the famous Salzburg Festival, and Hrůš conducted Káťa Kabanová by Leoš Janáček here in 2022.
For the video recording of this production directed by Barrie Kosky, they received the International Classical Music Award – this is awarded by the editors-in-chief of music magazines and representatives of cultural institutions. Hrůša himself was nominated for two other acts.
He made his debut as an opera conductor on the American continent last November, when he impressed in Chicago with a performance of another of Janáček’s works: Her Shepherdess, performed abroad under the title Jenůfa. “The highlight of the season, a refreshing, non-traditional program, played with intensity and momentum. Hrúša received a remarkably enthusiastic ovation from the audience, including loud cheers, not only after the performance, but already when he entered the stage. A majestic performance, a brilliant and captivating performance,” wrote the website Chicago Classical Review.
It is not surprising that this year Jakub Hrůša became the most prominent face of the generously conceived Year of Czech Music project, which, on the occasion of several anniversaries, intends to make visible not only the classics of Smetan or Janáček, but also lesser-known, yet excellent Czech composers. If we want to get Czech authors abroad, and that perhaps Antonín Dvořák is not the only one who needs it, it must be done through a world-renowned personality.
Enlightenment is clearly not enough: when Hrůš presented a beautiful and cleverly composed program on the theme of Italy at the Salzburg Easter Festival, in addition to the symphony Harold in Italy by Hector Berlioz, he also included Piero della Francesca’s Frescoes by Bohuslav Martinů.
In an interview, the journalist naively asked him why this particular work by this author. Hrůša, who also wrote a study about the composer, had to explain how things are with the quality of his work and that from the period when Martinů composed, not so much is played in concert halls. He will also open this year’s evening with the orchestra of the National Academy of Saint Cecilia at the Prague Spring with the frescoes of Piero della Francesca.
Piero della Francesca’s frescoes by Bohuslav Martinů have already been presented in Italy by Jakub Hrůša with the orchestra of the National Academy of Saint Cecilia. | Video: Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia
Tackle big goals
He recently turned forty and has been at the peak of his career for some time. So if by career we mean success and work for world bodies. However, for the intellectually oriented Hrůš, the top is still out of sight.
Similar to other creative and mentally working personalities, he puts the highest demands on himself. “I’ve always been interested in complex things. I’ve been attracted to the demands they put on me. I like to overcome a certain resistance: great novels, great works of music, great tourist destinations,” he said. The famous pianist Ivan Moravec once told him that he was “such an old soul”.
The conductor devotes great mental effort to the preparation of the scores, to reflections on the composer, the work, the epoch and the context. On the stage, however, the musings go by the wayside. There he shows that he is capable of great emotions. Otherwise, his speech would not be so immediately perceived by the audience.
When Jiří Bělohlávek died unexpectedly at the end of May 2017, for several months music circles talked about Jakub Hrůš as his possible successor at the head of the Czech Philharmonic. He himself said that he did not aspire to a position where the lay and professional public would like to see him. He returns to the first orchestra every now and then. Maybe one day the time will be right.
He currently lives straddling the English Channel, and from frequent travel he tries to get the positive: quiet time to read. His passion for literature, for books, does not leave him, and he even downloads audiobooks for family and friends in his spare time.
Video: A conductor must be a psychologist, says Hrůša
What cannot be communicated with words can be communicated with music, said the world-renowned conductor Jakub Hrůša on DVtv last year. | Video: Michael Rozsypal