Zdeněk Mácal, former music director of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, has died. Macal led the orchestra from 1993 to 2002. Together, they made some distinguished recordings, including a Grammy Award winning album of Dvořák’s Requiem and Symphony No. 9 “From the New World.”
Mácal fled communist Czechoslovakia for West Germany with his family after the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact members crushed the liberal Prague Spring movement in 1968.
He found work at the WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne and NDR Orchestra of Hanover. He also conducted in the U.K., Australia, and the U.S., making his American debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1972.
Following an advisory position in San Antonio and a principal conductorship with Chicago’s Grant Park Music Festival, he became music director of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra in 1986. From Milwaukee, he came New Jersey to take over the NJSO.
He returned to his homeland only after the communist regime was toppled in 1989. From 2003 to 2007, he served as chief conductor of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra.
Mácal died in Prague late yesterday. He was 87 years-old.
From Dvořák’s Requiem, with Princeton’s Westminster Symphonic Choir the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra
An interview with Bruce Duffie
