RADEK BABORÁK – Conductor and Horn Solo

Radek Baborák, born in 1976 in Pardubice, began studying with Prof. Karl Křenek Horn at the age of eight. Under his leadership, he won several prizes as a teenager – including the Concertino Praga radio competition and became a Grand Prix UNESCO prize winner. During his studies at the Prague Conservatory with Prof. B. Tylsar, he won several prizes – including the 1993 competition in Geneva and 1st prize at the ARD competition in Munich in 1994. He received the 1995 Grammy Classic Award and the Davidoff Award.

At the age of eighteen he was offered the position of principal horn with the Czech Philharmonic – quite unusually without an audition – which he held for two years. From 1996 to 2000 he was principal horn of the Munich Philharmonic and from 2003 to 2010 principal horn of the Berlin Philharmonic.

Radek Baborák is one of the most important personalities on the world music scene. With his extraordinary musical performances and his natural stage presence, he is a welcome guest in the most important cultural centers worldwide. As a soloist, he performed under the direction of legendary conductors such as Daniel Barenboim, Seiji Ozawa, Sir Simon Rattle, James Levine, John Eliot Gardiner and others at the Musikverein Wien, Teatro Collon Buenos Aires, the Berlin Philharmonic, Suntory Hall Tokyo, with the Saint Petersburg and Moscow Philharmonics and the Orchestra of the Teatro Colon. Baborák was the only horn player to play as a soloist with the Vienna Philharmonic and the Berlin Philharmonic.

In 2008 he began working on his career as a conductor. Baborák’s mentor is Maestro Daniel Barenboim, whom he assisted with the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra and under whose direction he has played several times as a soloist. He also worked closely with Maestro Seiji Ozawa, who asked him to lead his Mito Chamber Orchestra on the 2008 European tour. The highlight of his collaboration with Ozawa was the Mito Chamber Orchestra’s centenary concert, at which Beethoven’s 9th Symphony was performed, with the first two movements conducted by Baborák and the third and final movements conducted by Seiji Ozawa. Baborák’s popularity in Japan is extraordinary. There he conducts orchestras such as the Saito Kinen Orchestra, New Japan Philharmonic, Tokyo Philharmonic, Nagoya Philharmonic, Yomiuri Symphony Orchestra, Yamagata Symphony Orchestra, Pacific Festival Orchestra and Sapporo Philharmonic Orchestra. He was artist in residence at the Suntory Hall Tokyo with the project “The Art of Radek Baborak”. Seiji Ozawa said about him: “….Baborak is absolutely great. When he is playing, so it looks like it’s incredibly easy,… for me he is a genius…”

As a conductor, he has appeared at international festivals, including Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Mozart Week Salzburg (Baborak Ensemble and Rolando Villazon), Pacific Music Festival, Marta Argerich Festival, Prague Spring Festival, Suntory Hall Chamber Music Garden, International Festival Utrecht, Julian Rachlin and Friends of LePonte, Jerusalem Chamber Music Festival. He is the founder and chief conductor of the festival orchestra CZECH SINFONIETTA and artistic director of the legendary PRAGUE CHAMBER ORCHESTRA, founded in 1961 by Václav Neumann. He is guest conductor of the Yamagata Symphony Orchestra and chief conductor of the West Bohemian Symphony Orchestra Mariánské Lázně.

An important part of Radek Baborák’s musical life is chamber music. He founded and leads the Baborák Ensemble (horn and string quartet), Czech Horn Ensemble, which continues the 300-year tradition of horn playing in the Czech Republic, and the Baborák Orquestrina ensemble. He is a member of the Afflatus Quintet, with whom he won first prize at the ARD competition in Munich. His chamber music partners include Marta Argerich, Daniel Barenboim, Yefim Bronfman, Andras Schiff, Itamar Golan, R. Buchbinder, Gerhard Opitz, Julian Rachlin, Janine Jansen, Ian Bostridge, Thomas Quasthoff, Waltraud Mayer.

Radek Baborák’s horn and conducting repertoire includes compositions from the Baroque, Classical and Romantic periods as well as works by many composers of the 20th and 21st centuries and his own compositions, which is documented by numerous recordings for EMI, Supraphon, Exton, Sony Classic, among others. Sony Classic has released a live recording of the Mozart Horn Concertos and Sinfonia Concertante with the Mito Chamber Orchestra, Baborák and Ozawa. He has released more than twenty CDs over a period of ten years for the Japanese labels Octavia Records and Exton. The CD “Baborak Ensemble” received the Japanese Critics’ Prize. The recordings of the adaptations of the works by Anton Bruckner (Bruckner in Cathedral I, II) with the Czech Horn Ensemble with the participation of the organist Aleš Bárta in collaboration with the composer Miloš Bok were particularly successful.

Radek Baborák worked as a lecturer at, among others, the Fondazione Arturo Toscanini in Bologna, at the Reina Sophia University of Music in Madrid and was a visiting professor at the TOHO University of Tokyo and at the Luigi Cherubini Conservatory in Florence. He works at the Music Academy in Prague, at the Barenboim-Said Academy in Berlin and held workshops and master classes practically everywhere he played. He attaches great importance to supporting the young generation and leading student orchestras. He is a mentor at the MenArt art academy in Prague and supports talented students.