Sir Mackerras Prize awarded to conductor Robert Kružík
- Awards
The Sir Charles Mackerras Prize for young Czech Conductors, presented once every ten years by the Leoš Janáček Foundation, was awarded this year to Robert Kružík. The presentation took place on 12 October 2025 at the opening concert of the Moravian Autumn Festival in the Janáček Theatre in Brno.
Sir Charles Mackerras (17 November 1925 – 14 July 2010) made an extraordinary contribution to the dissemination of Czech music worldwide. He once observed, with characteristic modesty, that “if I am remembered for anything, it will probably be for Janáček.”
The Brno Philharmonic has dedicated this year’s edition of the Moravian Autumn Festival to Mackerras’s artistic legacy. The Leoš Janáček Foundation has likewise joined in marking the centenary of his birth by conferring the Sir Charles Mackerras Prize, awarded in the presence of his daughter, Catherine Mackerras.
Sir Charles generously bequeathed part of his royalties to the Leoš Janáček Foundation, which the Foundation’s Management Board resolved to devote to supporting and recognising gifted Czech conductors under the age of forty. The prize is awarded in jubilee years marking Sir Charles Mackerras’s birth. So far, this has occurred only once before – in 2015, when the award was conferred upon Jakub Hrůša, now Music Director of the Royal Opera House, London.
A specialist panel recommended, that the Sir Charles Mackerras Prize 2025 be awarded to Robert Kružík, as a mark of confidence in his artistic potential. The Leoš Janáček Foundation fully supports this decision, sharing the intention to foster the career of a talented conductor and to help him attain the international recognition he deserves.
Through his work to date, Robert Kružík has demonstrated a deep and sincere engagement with the music of Leoš Janáček, and his recent appointment as Chief Conductor of the Janáček Opera of the National Theatre Brno promises a comprehensive and thoughtful interpretation of all of the Master’s operas.
Biographical note on the laureate
Robert Kružík (b. 1990) is a Czech conductor and cellist whose artistic career has been closely linked with the Janáček Opera of the National Theatre Brno, where he became Chief Conductor in 2025. Since the 2018/2019 season, he has been the principal guest conductor of the Brno Philharmonic Orchestra and, since the 2021/2022 season, the chief conductor of the Bohuslav Martinů Philharmonic Orchestra in Zlín.
A laureate of the Jiří Bělohlávek Prize (2020), he teaches conducting at the Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Brno.
His repertoire encompasses a broad spectrum of nineteenth- and twentieth-century music, with a particular focus on Czech composers. Kružík has conducted numerous works by Leoš Janáček, including The Cunning Little Vixen, From the House of the Dead, Jenůfa, Taras Bulba, Sinfonietta, and the Glagolitic Mass—the latter also with Sinfonia Varsovia and the Choir of the National Philharmonic in Warsaw, for whom it was their first performance of this groundbreaking masterpiece by Janáček.
