Rafael Kubelík
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Rafael Jeroným Kubelík (Býchory, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary, today Czech Republic, June 29, 1914 – August 11, 1996 in Kastanienbaum, Canton of Lucerne, Switzerland) was a Czech conductor and composer.
He was the sixth child (and first son) of the great Bohemian violinist Jan Kubelík. He studied violin, composition, and conducting at the conservatory in Prague and also studied violin with his father, of whom he said, "He was a kind of god to me." Rafael Kubelik graduated from the conservatory in 1933, at the age of 19; at his graduation concert he played a Paganini concerto and a composition of his own for violin and orchestra. Kubelik was also an accomplished pianist, and served as his father's piano accompanist on a tour of the United States in 1935.
In 1939 Rafael Kubelík became music director of the Brno Opera, and in 1941 he was appointed chief conductor of the country's foremost orchestra, the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra. (He had first conducted the Czech Philharmonic in 1934 when he was 20 years old.) In 1946, he founded the "Prague Spring" Festival.
After the Communist coup of February 1948, Kubelik left Czechoslovakia, vowing not to return until the country was liberated. He eventually did return to Prague after the fall of Communism, leading the Czech Philharmonic in the Prague Spring Festival in 1990; see below.
In 1950, Kubelik became music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, choosing the position over an offer from the BBC to succeed Sir Adrian Boult as chief conductor. But in 1953, he was "hounded out of the [Chicago] job" (to quote Time Magazine) by the "savage attacks" (to quote the New Grove Dictionary of Music) of the Chicago Tribune music critic Claudia Cassidy. New Grove notes that Cassidy's foremost complaint was that Kubelik introduced too many contemporary works (about 70 of them) to the orchestra. She also trashed many of his performances. (The recordings made by Kubelik in Chicago, many available on CD, are now typically admired by critics.)
After leaving Chicago, Kubelik became music director of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden from 1955 to 1958, then of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra from 1961 to 1979. Kubelik's association with the Bavarian Radio Symphony is generally regarded as the high point of his career both artistically and professionally.
In 1972, Göran Gentele, the new general manager of the Metropolitan Opera, New York City, asked Kubelik to accept the newly created position of Music Director of the Met. Kubelik accepted partly because of his strong artistic relationship with Gentele. The tragic death of Gentele in an automobile accident in 1972 undermined Kubelik's reasons for working at the opera house, and Kubelik also found the position so time-consuming (with its administrative demands) that it was drawing him away from his favored responsibilities in Bavaria. Thus Kubelik chose to leave the Met in 1974.
In his post-Czechoslovakian career, Kubelik worked closely with such orchestras as Berlin Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Vienna Philharmonic, Israel Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. His penultimate conducting appearance, in October of 1991, was with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra; at the end, the orchestra gave him an honorary fanfare, a tribute it had offered conductors only rarely in its history.
Kubelik recorded a large repertory, in many cases more than once per work. We have two complete recordings of his traversals of three major symphony cycles - those of Johannes Brahms, Robert Schumann, and Ludwig von Beethoven. When Kubelik recorded his first complete Beethoven symphony cycle, for Deutsche Grammophon, he insisted on using nine different orchestras, one for each symphony. His complete cycle of Gustav Mahler's symphonies (recorded from 1967 to 1971 with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra) is widely regarded as one of the essential Mahler sets. Of his Mahler, Daniel Barenboim remarked, "I often thought I was missing something in Mahler until I listened to Kubelik. These is a lot more to be discovered in these pieces than just a generalized form of extrovert excitement. That is what Kubelik showed." (Barenboim, A Life in Music, p. 223)
In 1985, ill-health caused Kubelik to retire from full-time conducting, but the fall of Communism in his homeland led him to accept a 1990 invitation to return to conduct his one-time orchestra, the Czech Philharmonic, at the festival he had founded, the Prague Spring Festival. He recorded the Smetana Má Vlast live with the Czech Philharmonic for Supraphon, his fourth recording of the piece (a short excerpt of the performance can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlLPLO90fSk ). He also recorded the Dvořák "New World" symphony at the Festival. During the rehearsal of the "New World," he told the Czech Philharmonic, "It is my joy to hear this. I always wanted it to sound like this but never really found it with any other orchestra in the world. That eighth [note] is great!”
Among his compositions are five operas, a number of symphonies, three settings of the Requiem text, other choral works, and many works of chamber music.
Kubelik married the well-known Czech violinist Ludmilla Bertlova during World War II; their son, Martin Kubelik, is an art historian. Bertlova died in Switzerland (where the couple then lived) in 1961. Kubelik remarried in 1963, to the Australian soprano Elsie Morrison (b. 1924), who survives him. Kubelik died in 1996 and was interred in the Vyšehrad cemetery in Prague.
Quotes about Kubelik:
In his book, A Life in Music (p. 49), Daniel Barenboim recounts playing Beethoven concertos as a teenager with Kubelik conducting. At one point, says Barenboim, "I made an unforgivable crescendo in the middle of a passage that was marked piano, and Kubelik told me, 'Of course, what you are doing is wonderfully effective, even beautiful, but you must sometimes sacrifice the beauty of the moment for the beauty of a long line and structure.'" Says Barenboim, "The concept was not new to me because I had grown up with it, but Kubelik's articulation was so clear, and linked to such a very precise case in point, that I have always remembered it." Barenboim adds, "He was one of the few examples of a really independent musicians - he had adopted a line without any artistic compromise."
Barenboim also said (in the documentary film, Rafael Kubelik: Music is My Country) that "Kubelik was one of those rare musicians whose human qualities were evident both in music making and outside. You could feel in the way he treated the musicians and in the way he behaved generally, what a generous and free human being he was."
The New Grove mentions that Kubelik was "greatly respected and liked" by orchestra musicians generally. Henry Fogel describes his "gentleness," and in the above-mentioned film, Kubelik himself says that the orchestra/ conductor relationship should be an example of a true democratic republic - the conductor cannot, he said, be a dictator.
References:
Barenboim, Daniel A Life in Music (London, 2002).
Moritz, Reiner Rafael Kubelik: Music Is My Country (DVD, RM Creative, Munich, 2003)
[edit] Recordings
Kubelík's complete discography is enormous, with music ranging from Malcolm Arnold through Jan Dismas Zelenka, with recordings both in the studio and in concert. Aside from complete cycles of Beethoven, Brahms, Dvorak, and Mahler, Kubelík made recordings of great orchestral and operatic works by composers such as Bach, Mozart, Haydn, Tchaikovsky, Wagner, Verdi and many others, including many modern composers.
A selection of Kubelík's recordings is provided below. An extensive discography is found in the external links section.
| Composer | Composition | Date | Orchestra | Recording |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Beethoven | Symphony No. 4 | 1975 | Israel Philharmonic Orchestra | Deutsche Grammophon |
| Symphony No. 5 | 1973 | Boston Symphony Orchestra | ||
| Symphony No. 6 | Orchestre de Paris | |||
| Symphony No. 7 | 1974 | Wiener Philharmoniker | ||
| Symphony No. 8 | 1975 | The Cleveland Orchestra | ||
| Symphony No. 9 | Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks | |||
| Berg | Violin Concerto | 1971 | ||
| Brahms | Ein deutsches Requiem | 1978 | Unknown | |
| Bruckner | Symphony No. 3 | 1985 | Sony Classical | |
| Dvořák | Symphonic Variations on The fiddler | 1974 | Deutsche Grammophon | |
| Ouverture to a play by F. F. Samberk | 1973-4 | |||
| Hussite Dramatic overture | ||||
| In Nature's realm Concert Overture | ||||
| Carnival Concert Overture | 1977 | |||
| Othello Concert Overture | ||||
| Scherzo capriccioso | 1975 | |||
| Symphony No. 1 | 1973 | Berliner Philharmoniker | ||
| Symphony No. 2 | ||||
| Symphony No. 3 | ||||
| Symphony No. 4 | ||||
| Symphony No. 5 | ||||
| Symphony No. 6 | ||||
| Symphony No. 7 | 1971 | |||
| Symphony No. 8 | 1966 | |||
| Symphony No. 9 | 1973 | |||
| The Noon Witch | 1974 | Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks | ||
| The Water Goblin | ||||
| The Wild Dove | ||||
| 1976 | ||||
| Grieg | Piano Concerto | 1964 | Berliner Philharmoniker | |
| Hindemith | Chamber Music No. 5 | 1966 | Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks | Bayerischer Rundfunk |
| Concerto Music ( Op. 48) | 1963 | |||
| Der Schwanendreher | 1968 | |||
| Janáček | Concertino | 1970 | Deutsche Grammophon | |
| The Diary of One Who Disappeared | ||||
| Glagolitic Mass | ||||
| Sinfonietta | 1970 | |||
| Taras Bulba | ||||
| Mahler | Symphony No. 1 | 1967 | ||
| 1979 | Bayerischer Rundfunk | |||
| Symphony No. 2 | 1969 | Deutsche Grammophon | ||
| 1982 | Bayerischer Rundfunk | |||
| Symphony No. 3 | 1967 | Deutsche Grammophon | ||
| Symphony No. 4 | 1968 | |||
| Symphony No. 5 | 1971 | |||
| 1981 | Bayerischer Rundfunk | |||
| Symphony No. 6 | 1968 | Deutsche Grammophon | ||
| Symphony No. 7 | 1970 | |||
| Symphony No. 8 | ||||
| Symphony No. 9 | 1967 | |||
| Symphony No. 10 | 1968 | |||
| Mozart | Eine kleine Nachtmusik | 1962 | Wiener Philharmoniker | EMI |
| Symphony No. 36 | ||||
| Schoenberg | Piano Concerto | 1972 | Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks | Deutsche Grammophon |
| Violin Concerto | ||||
| Schubert | Symphony No. 9 | 1960 | Royal Philharmonic Orchestra | EMI |
| Schumann | Piano Concerto | 1964 | Berliner Philharmoniker | Deutsche Grammophon |
| Smetana | Má vlast | 1971 | Boston Symphony Orchestra | |
| Tchaikovsky | Symphony No. 4 | 1961 | Wiener Philharmoniker | EMI |
| Verdi | Rigoletto | 1964 | Orchester del Teatro alla Scala | Deutsche Grammophon |
| Wagner | Lohengrin | 1971 | Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks | |
| Weber | Der Freischütz | 1980 | Decca | |
| Oberon | 1970 | Deutsche Grammophon |
| Preceded by Václav Talich |
Principal Conductor, Czech Philharmonic Orchestra 1942–1948 |
Succeeded by Karel Ančerl |
| Preceded by Artur Rodziński |
Music Director, Chicago Symphony Orchestra 1950–1953 |
Succeeded by Fritz Reiner |
| Preceded by Karl Rankl |
Music Director, Royal Opera House, Covent Garden 1955–1958 |
Succeeded by Georg Solti |
| Preceded by Eugen Jochum |
Chief Conductor, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra 1961–1979 |
Succeeded by Sir Colin Davis |
| Preceded by none |
Music Director, Metropolitan Opera 1972-1974 |
Succeeded by James Levine |
