Alena Hron (Jelínková) conductor

"… But the main reason they played with a degree of motivation and excellence that is rarely heard was clearly the conductor, with her ability to inspire, lead and command with subtlety. Her festival debut was energetic and expressive, admirably authoritative at the very end, yet the music had plenty of room to breathe. …" (Prague Spring Debut, May 2023, Prague Symphony Orchestra)

bio

Thanks to her musical enthusiasm, Alena Hron is winning favour with musicians not only at home in the Czech Republic, but also abroad. From the 2024/25 season, she will be the chief conductor of the South Czech Philharmonic. In early 2024, she was selected as Fellow in the Taki Fellowship, a two-year award that includes intensive coaching and mentoring with Marin Alsop and other music industry professionals and opportunities to conduct leading orchestras abroad.

She has worked with most of the symphony orchestras in the Czech Republic (Prague Symphony Orchestra, Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, Janáček Philharmonic Ostrava and Prague Philharmonia, among many others). Her debut at the Prague Spring International Festival 2023 was considered a great success. She has performed with the Janáček Philharmonic in Berlin and Paris and has also recorded a complete orchestral work by the Czech composer Vítězslava Kapralová. Together with Jakub Hrůša, she conducted orchestral concerts at the Ševčík Academy in Horažďovice during August 2022 and 2023.

Her international collaborations include the Southwest German Philharmonic Orchestra of Constance, the Göttingen Symphony Orchestra, the Basel Collegium Musicum Orchestra and the Košice Philharmonic.

When it comes to theatre, in 2023, she was assistant to Kaspar Zehnder in a new production of Rusalka in Metz and presented a new production of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake at the National Moravian-Silesian Theatre. At the Silesian Theatre in Opava, she was a conductor of Verdi’s Rigoletto in 2022 and of a successful production of the musical Funny Girl in 2021. In 2018, she conducted Puccini’s La Bohème at the F. X. Šalda Theatre in Liberec.

She was also a co-founder and the artistic director (until the end of the 2021/22 season) of the chamber choir Punkt, which under her direction won several awards at prestigious international competitions, and which focuses on contemporary music. In the 2021/22 season, she also collaborated with the Prague Philharmonic Choir.

In June 2024, Alena Hron will complete her second master’s degree at the prestigious Zurich University of the Arts in the class of Johannes Schlaefli and Christoph-Mathias Mueller, thanks to which she has conducted orchestras in Constance, Amiens, Göttingen, Nürnberg, Magdeburg and Thessaloniki. She previously studied conducting at the Prague Conservatory (Miriam Němcová, Hynek Farkač, Miroslav Košler), the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (Tomáš Koutník, Leoš Svárovský, Zbyněk Müller) and the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo (Ole Kristian Ruud, Sigmund Thorp).

She has also participated in conducting masterclasses under the direction of Vasily Petrenko, Christian Ehwald, Stefan Parkman and Greta Pedersen.