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CENTRAL EUROPEAN MUSIC AGENCY
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CONDUCTOR SINGERS PIANO HARPSICHORD ORGAN HARP VIOLA CELLO FRENCH HORN ENSEMBLES PROJECTS |
| Zbyněk Müller is the principle conductor of the Košice State Philharmonia (Slovakia) and a conductor at the National Theatre Opera in Prague. He studied the oboe at the Conservatoire in Prague (F. X. Thuri) and at the Prague Academy of the Musical Arts (J. Mihule). During his studies, he achieved significant success in this field – as well as five first prizes in national competitions, he also received the second prize in the Prague Spring International Music Competition in 1996 and he was awarded the Josef Hlávka Prize in the same year. He was the principal oboist at the National Theatre Opera in Prague for two years and from 1995 to 2005 he was the solo oboe in the Prague Philharmonia. He has been involved with conducting since 1990 – after his studies at the Prague Conservatoire under M. Klemens, he graduated from the Academy of the Musical Arts under the direction of J. Bělohlávek. In 1996, he began cooperating with the Prague Philharmonia as a conductor, with whom he has conducted more than 50 concerts over ten years, including performances at significant musical festivals and prestigious events (the Prague Spring, Chopin’s Marienbad, the Murten Classics and the Celebration of the Anniversary of A. Dvořák’s Death in 2004 – a concert with a live broadcast to all of Europe, etc.), and has performed as the soloist and conductor in one person several times. He has already conducted the majority of the Czech symphonic ensembles and in 2004 he successfully debuted with the Košice State Philharmonia, which invited him to work with it again in 2006. His regular cooperation with the Košice Philharmonia culminated in his being appointed the principle conductor from the 2008/2009 season. As a conductor, he has cooperated with a number of leading artists (Josef Suk, Michaela Fukačová, Sharon Kam, Isabelle Faust, Ludmila Peterková, Jiří Bárta, Pavel Šporcl, Eva Urbanová, Anna-Louise Bogza, Sergej Larin and others). In the period from 2001 to 2002, he worked as an assistant to Vladimir Ashkenazy, the principle conductor at the Czech Philharmonia, where he also cooperated with a number of other significant conductors such as Leif Segerstam, Claus Peter Flor, Zdeněk Mácal and Manfred Honeck. He has recorded for Czech Radio and Czech Television. Recently, Zbyněk Müller has increasingly dedicated himself to opera – since 2000, he has conducted productions of Don Giovanni, the Magic Flute, Fate, Adriana Lecouvreur, Aida, the Greek Passions, Carmen, Samson et Delilah, Smetana’s operas the Secret and the Kiss and the opera La Conquista (L. Ferrero), which he prepared and performed in the world premiere in 2005, at the National Theatre in Prague. He has appeared as a conductor with the National Theatre ensemble (where he has had a permanent conductor’s engagement since 2004) at the Festival of Janáček Operas in Brno (Fate), the Smetana’s Litomyšl Festival (the Secret and the Kiss), in Düsseldorf (Don Giovanni), at the International Opera Festival in Wiesbaden (Adriana Lecouvreur), in South Korea and at the prestigious International Festival in Ravenna, Italy (Don Giovanni). As well as his work at the National Theatre, he is also regularly invited by international opera houses such as the Teatro Real Madrid (Fate) or the Deutsche Oper am Rhein Düsseldorf-Duisburg, where he prepared a new production of Dona Giovanni (2005). Zbyněk Müller has purposefully dedicated himself towards contemporary music of a conservative vein. He is a member of the Elgar artistic association and an active promoter of the works of young Czech composers. |
