Category: Daily Dispatch

Yesterday would have been the 100th birthday of the Czech conductor, Rafael Kubelik, a fact I overlooked in yet another self-serving post about one of my shows.

Over the course of his career, Kubelik held positions as principal conductor of the Czech Philharmonic, music director of the Chicago and Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestras, and musical director of the Royal Opera, Covent Garden.

He weathered the Nazi occupation, although his standing was often a precarious one. When the Communists took over, he packed his bags and headed for Britain. He had been engaged to conduct “Don Giovanni” at the Edinburgh Festival in 1948. His wife learned of his decision to defect only when they were already on the plane. In 1953, the couple was convicted in absentia of “taking illicit leave.”

In 1956, Kubelik was invited back with a promise of freedom to do whatever he liked, but he declined in an open letter to The Times, stating he would only consider returning once all political prisoners were freed and all émigrés were granted the same rights he was promised. Likewise, he declined further invitations.

In 1946, he had helped found the Prague Spring Festival and conducted its opening concert. He returned only in 1990, after the fall of Communism, and well after he had formally retired from the podium. The emotional reunion, in which he conducted the Czech Philharmonic in Smetana’s “Ma Vlast,” was preserved on Supraphon Records. It was Kubelik’s fifth recording of the piece.

I remember when Rafael Kubelik died. I was vacationing with my family at the Jersey shore in 1996. It was the one week a year when I did heavy newspaper reading, and I remember when coming across the coverage in the New York Times, remarking to my mother what a big deal his death was. Now my mother is gone, as well.

Here’s Rafael Kubelik with the complete “Ma Vlast” from the 1990 Prague Spring Festival:

Also from 1990, an outdoor “Vltava” (a.k.a. “The Moldau”):