Dutch-Croatian conductor and violist Ivan Hut (Pula, 1982) began his musical education at the Josip Hatze Music School in Split. He graduated in viola from the Academy of Music in Zagreb under Milan Čunko in 2005. In the course of his education, he won numerous awards in national competitions of young musicians. As a violist, he has performed in Germany, Austria, Italy, Czech Republic, Slovenia and Hungary. From 2000 to 2009 he was a member of the Split Chamber Orchestra where he, supported and inspired by maestro Pavle Dešpalj, developed his love of conducting. In 2013, he founded the Camerata Split string orchestra, and produced the 59th Split Summer Festival concert programme. The following year he was the music director at the same festival. In the 2013/14 season, while he was the director of the Opera of the Croatian National Theatre Split, the operas Mefistofele by Arrigo Boito and Aida by Giuseppe Verdi were performed with great success at the 60th Split Summer Festival.
In 2014, he began his conducting studies at the Codarts University of the Arts in Rotterdam under Hans Leenders. During his studies in the Netherlands, he trained with Kenneth Montgomery, Etienne Siebens and Antony Hermus. He received scholarships from the Lovro and Lilly Matačić Foundation and Het Kersjes Foundation for young conductors in the Netherlands. He was an assistant to Hans Leenders on the Codarts Project – Codarts Symphony Orchestra concert at the Gergiev Festival in Rotterdam conducted by Valery Gergiev. In 2016, he completed his Bachelor’s degree with an operatic debut, conducting Puccini’s Suor Angelica, and enrolled in a Master’s degree programme under Hans Leenders, with Yannick Nezet Seguin as one of his mentors. In the same year, he brought together graduates of the Codarts Rotterdam and the Royal Conservatoire of The Hague in the NOW Orchestra and successfully conducted two performances in Rotterdam in the 2016/17 season (Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade and Ravel’s Bolero). After completing his Master’s degree in 2018 as the best student in his year, he was granted the opportunity to perform at the 30th Gergiev Festival in Rotterdam’s De Doelen Hall.
In December 2020 he was appointed conductor of the Dubrovnik Symphony Orchestra, and has conducted more than fifty concerts over the last three years. He has collaborated with numerous orchestras, including the Sinfonia Rotterdam (at the Concertgebouw Amsterdam), the Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra, the Croatian Radio and Television Symphony Orchestra, the Zadar and Varaždin Chamber Orchestras, the Guanajuato University Symphony Orchestra (Mexico), the Rijeka Symphony Orchestra, the Slovene National Theatre Maribor Symphony Orchestra. He was an assistant to Plácido Domingo in the performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s Requiem with the Croatian Radio and Television Symphony Orchestra, to Ivan Repušić at the opera gala at the Croatian National Theatre Zagreb, and to Srba Dinić in the production of Mozart’s Magic Flute, also at the Croatian National Theatre Zagreb. In 2024 he conducted the performance of The Magic Flute at the Slovene National Theatre Maribor.
Photo: Krešimir Ferenčina
