RAFAEL KUBELÍK

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14 ENGLISH had a close relationship with his father but never made a big thing of the fact that his father was a world famous musician – and never relied on his famous name opening doors for him. During later years, music lovers would stumble across the kindredship between Jan and Rafael Kubelík by accident. At the most, in view of his immense examination programme, it could be interpreted that Kubelík made great demands on himself due to his parentage: he performed a violin concerto by Paganini, composed a fantasia for violin and orchestra and conducted a Dvorák symphony. He gave his debut as a conductor at the age of nineteen with the Czech Philharmonic – even before he had completed his studies; the programme included Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony, alongside Kubelík’s Fantasia No. 2 for violin and orchestra, played by his father. Between 1936 and 1939 Kubelík kept returning to conduct the Czech Philharmonic as a staff guest conductor and in 1937, when the principal conductor Václav Talich was taken ill, it was Kubelík who took the orchestra on a concert tour of Great Britain and Belgium; the twenty concerts were such a resounding success that the tour was repeated in the following year. In 1939 he conducted the orchestra during ten legendary concert evenings, in which his father – based on the role model of Rubinstein’s “Historical Concerts” – performed thirty violin concertos, tracing the history of this genre from the late Italian baroque period to the modern age. At this point in time Kubelík had already taken up the position of music director at the opera house in Brno (earlier Brünn), a position he held from 1939 until the house was closed by the Nazis in 1941. One of the projects that caused a sensation during this period was the production of one his favourite works: Hector Berlioz’ opera Les Troyens. In memory of his father, who had died in 1940, he wrote his first major choral symphonic work – Requiem pro memoria patris. One year later he returned once more to the Czech Philharmonic in Prague – this time as principal conductor. However, unlike Talich, who had rarely set out on tours with the orchestra, Kubelík toured through England, France and Switzerland – especially after his home country had been liberated in 1945 (at the end of the war he had conducted an open air rendition of Smetana’s My Fatherland in Prague) – and gained valuable contacts in the process. Due to the fact that he had refused to collaborate with the Germans during occupation, Kubelík was actively involved in the cultural redevelopment of Czechoslovakia and was given a post with the Czech Philharmonic. He strengthened the orchestra, mainly taking on young musicians, and considered it to be one of his most important duties towards Russian, American and French music and the Jewish composers banned during the war – to ‘make amends, so that true values are once again recognised in Prague.‘ This was also a productive period for the composer Kubelík: he wrote several string quartets and operas, in addition to a symphony. However, political freedom was not to last long – the Communists came to power in 1948 – but
unlike many of his fellow countrymen, who wanted to sit back and see what developments would take place, Kubelík nurtured a well-defined aversion towards any kind of dictatorship (“I’m an anti-Communist and an anti-Fascist. I don’t believe that artistic freedom can flourish under totalitarianism. Individuals cannot change things in a country ruled by totalitarians, and those who think they can do so through strength of character are quite simply naive!”). In the very same year he took advantage of an engagement as guest conductor at the Glyndebourne Opera Festival ensemble in Edinburgh to go into exile in England with his family (he had married violinist Ludmila Bertlová in 1942). Kubelík swore never to return to Czechoslovakia as long as the Communist dictatorship was in power – and stayed true to his word, in contrast to many other Czech musicians living in exile, who accepted the compromise of appearing in their home country under the Communist régime. In reply to the numerous invitations Kubelík demanded that all political prisoners be released and that all Czechs be granted the same liberties he himself was being offered. ENGLISH 15 He first moved to London before emigrating to Switzerland, where he became a Swiss citizen in 1967. He built up his reputation through appearances as a guest conductor in the major music metropoles: in London, the BBC Orchestra would have liked to have seen him succeeding Sir Adrian Boult as principal conductor, he made guest appearances at the music festivals in Lucerne and Venice, conducted the Vienna Philharmonic for the first time at the Salzburg Festival in 1950 and toured throughout South America, Australia and the Soviet Union – but a performance with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra was so successful that he was engaged as music director on the spot (which did not prevent him, however, from carrying on giving guest performances as a conductor – he enjoyed a special relationship with the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam, for example). This engagement in Chicago only lasted three years – from 1950 to 1953 – but working together with the orchestra proved to be both productive and agreeable; recordings with the CSO document Kubelík’s early style, with strict rhythms at moderate tempi and his characteristic mixture of emotional depth urging the music on. By making the texture of the movements transparent, Kubelík was also able to lend a surprising freshness and buoyancy to frequently performed works – but the press were still capable of criticising the principal conductor more and more often for an allegedly limited repertoire and too high proportion of modern works (for example, in 1952, Kubelík conducted Roy Harris’ Seventh Symphony and in 1953 Ernest Bloch’s Suite hébraïque at their respective premiere performances). Perhaps that could have been accepted but Kubelík was not to be forgiven for the fact that he kept using black soloists. Following a performance with the Vienna Philharmonic in Zurich in 1953, Kubelík felt the urge to work in Europe again and personal reasons tipped the scales – he went to Lucerne, where he was living in the meantime, and started dividing his time between Switzerland and London.
Seite 1 und 2: RAFAEL KUBELÍK Portrait
Seite 3 und 4: Vol 2
Seite 5 und 6: Vol 3 Vol 4
Seite 7 und 8: hinzufügen - und er hatte Recht!
Seite 9 und 10: vielgespielten Stücken verleiht Ku
Seite 11 und 12: das eine Vorliebe für Mahler, Jan
Seite 13: ENGLISH 13 Rafael jeronÝm Kubelík
Seite 17 und 18: Kubelík’s work peaked with the M
Seite 19: which at some point risked venturin

RAFAEL KUBELÍK

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