Antonín Kohout (12 December 1919 – 15 February 2013) was a Czech cellist and founder of the Smetana Quartet.
After changes of personnel the quartet, by then known as the Smetana Quartet, first performed professionally on 6 November 1945 at the Prague Municipal Library, with violinists Jaroslav Rybenský and Lubomír Kostecký, Neumann playing viola and Kohout playing cello; they played quartets by Bedřich Smetana and Vítězslav Novák.
"[1] Neumann left in 1947 to pursue a conducting career, and there were other changed of personnel in later years.
From 1949, taking the example of the Kolisch Quartet and the Quartetto Italiano, they performed without the printed music; this continued until 1974, from which time they played only their Czech repertoire from memory.
From 1967 Kohout and the other quartet members taught at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague.