Jakub Hrůša

Jakub Hrůša comes from Brno in the Czech Republic, and is chief conductor of the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, and principal guest conductor of the Czech Philharmonic and of the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. From 2025 he will take up the position of music director of The Royal Opera, Covent Garden.

He appears as a guest conductor with many of the world’s greatest orchestras, and enjoys close relationships with the Vienna, Berlin and Munich Philharmonics, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Dresden Staatskapelle, the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra, the Philharmonia Orchestra (where he was principal guest conductor), the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, the Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Orchestre de Paris, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, the NHK Symphony Orchestra and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. In the USA, he works regularly with the Cleveland Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Jakub Hrůša’s opera conducting engagements have included new productions of Káťa Kabanová at the Salzburg Festival, The Makropulos Affair at the Vienna State Opera and the Zurich Opera, Carmen at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and Rusalka at the Paris Opéra. In spring 2022 he conducted a revival of Lohengrin at London‘s Royal Opera House. He is a regular guest at Glyndebourne Festival where he has conducted Vanessa, The Cunning Little Vixen, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Carmen, The Turn of the Screw, Don Giovanni and La bohème; he was also music director of Glyndebourne on Tour for three years.

Jakub Hrůša has worked with many outstanding instrumentalists and singers. His recordings have won numerous prizes and nominations. Most recently he and the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra won an award in the category ‘symphonic work’ at the International Classical Music Awards in 2022 and 2023, and also won the German Record Critics’ Award for their recording of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony. His recording of Martinů’s violin concertos with Frank Peter Zimmermann and the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra won a Gramophone Award in 2021; in the same year his recording of Dvořák’s Violin Concerto with Augustin Hadelich and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra was nominated for a Grammy Award. In 2020 two of his recordings – of Dvořák and Martinů piano concertos with Ivo Kahánek and the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra and of Vanessa at Glyndebourne – won BBC Music Magazine Awards.

Jakub Hrůša studied conducting at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, where his teachers included Jiří Bělohlávek. He is president of the International Martinů Circle and of the Dvořák Society. He was the inaugural recipient of the Sir Charles Mackerras Prize and in 2020 was awarded the Antonín Dvořák Prize from the Czech Republic’s Academy of Classical Music and – together with the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra – the Bavarian State Prize for Music. In 2023 he was awarded an OPUS Klassik as Conductor of the Year.