The French horn player and conductor Radek Baborák is one of the most prominent musical personalities of the Classical music scene internationally. Since his solo debut in 1989, he has been collaborating with many of the world’s top orchestras and leading conductors. After serving for many years as the principal French horn player of the Berlin Philharmonic, and having been enriched by a great deal of experience in the field of chamber music and as the artistic director of ensembles (the Baborak Ensemble, the Horn Chorus, and the Afflatus Quintet), in 2008 he began a parallel career as a conductor. In doing so, he is following in the tradition of conducting instrumentalists who decided to realise their artistic ideas and dreams by conducting their own performances. Along these lines, Baborák’s main mentor and model is Maestro Daniel Barenboim, whom he assisted with the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, and he has appeared as a soloist under Barenboin’s baton. He has taken part in chamber projects of the Boulez Ensemble, and he serves as a professor at the Barenboim-Said Academy in Berlin.

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The initial impulse that led him to the conductor’s podium was being asked by the musicians of the Mito Chamber Orchestra to step in for their ailing chief conductor, Maestro Seiji Ozawa, on a European tour in 2008. Baborák became Ozawa’s pupil, and the highpoint of their work together came at the jubilee 100th concert of the MCO, at which Radek Baborák conducted the first two movements of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, then Seiji Ozawa conducted the third movement and the finale.

In 2011 he took the initiative in founding the Czech Sinfonietta, a festival orchestra, of which he is the chief conductor, and in 2013 he took over as the artistic director of the Prague Chamber Soloists. Since the 2017 season he has been the principal guest conductor of the Yamagata Symphony Orchestra, and since the 2021 season he is the chief conductor of the West Bohemia Symphony Orchestra in Mariánské Lázně.

Radek Baborák has worked with such orchestras as the Duisburg Philharmonic, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, the Thuringia Philharmonic, the Rhine Philharmonic, the Malaysian Philharmonic orchestra, the Istanbul State Orchestra, the Mozarteum Orchestra in Salzburg, the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Prague Symphony Orchestra, and the Prague Philharmonia.

He is exceptionally popular in Japan, where he has conducted many orchestras including the New Japan Philharmonic, the Mito Chamber Orchestra, the Tokyo Philharmonic, the Nagoya Philharmonic, and the Kioi Sinfonietta.

As a conductor and soloist, he has appeared at such renowned festivals as Maggio musicale Fiorentino, the Mozartwoche Salzurg, the Pacific Music Festival, the Martha Argerich Festival in Beppu, the Prague Spring Festival, the Dvořák Prague Festival, and Smetana’s Litomyšl. He has accompanied such renowned soloists as Yefim Bronfmann, Guy Braunstein, Julian Steckel, Saleem Aboud Ashkar, Marie-Piere Langlamet, Jana Boušková, Clara Dent, Janne Saksala, Dalibor Karvay, Jan Mráček, and Ricardo Galliano.

Radek Baborák’s repertoire includes music of the Baroque, Classical, and Romantic periods and works of the 20th and 21st centuries by composers including N. Tamir, T. Hosokawa, J. Adams, E. P. Salonen, and A. S. Saario.

He has given world premieres of works by J.G.Páleníček, M.Bok, L. Hurník, and A.Březina as well as of his own compositions l’Orangerie and N.V.P. 

Source: Česká sinfonietta