Rafael Kubelik: The Complete HMV Recordings

Kubelík’s Czech identity is powerfully asserted with works by Smetana (including movements from Má vlast), Dvořák, Janáček and Martinů, but the box also includes Austro-German repertoire (Mozart, Beethoven Schubert, Mendelssohn, Brahms), Russian composers (Tchaikovsky, Borodin) and music by Bartók and Nielsen. Kubelík’s recordings for EMI, now Warner Classics, have been by far less exploited and reissued than his recordings for DGG, and numerous recordings, including early pre-war rare performanced with the Czech Philharmonic find here there first release on CD:

Smetana: Má vlast – Czech Philharmonic Orchestra – 1937 Dvořák: Carnival Ov., In Nature’s Realm, Othello – Czech Philharmonic Orchestra – 1946 Mendelssohn: Meeresstille und gluckliche Fahrt – Philharmonia Orchestra – 1949 Mozart: Overtures – Philharmonia Orchestra – 1951-1952 Gluck: Iphigenia in Aulis – Overture – Philharmonia Orchestra – 1952 Mendelssohn: A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Philharmonia Orchestra -1952 Bartók: Two Portraits, Op.5 – Royal Philharmonic Orchestra – 1958 Dvořák: Scherzo Capriccioso – Royal Philharmonic Orchestra – 1958 Borodin: Prince Igor – Polovstian Dances – Wiener Philharmoniker – 1960

The Czech conductor Rafael Kubelík was born in 1914, the son of the celebrated violinist Jan Kubelík. He studied at the Prague Conservatory and made his debut conducting the Czech Philharmonic at the age of 19 in 1934. Kubelík conducted a broad repertory, and championed many modern works over a career of nearly five decades. His performances of Czech works, such as Smetana’s patriotic Má vlast, are considered especially authoritative. Kubelík made his first recordings for EMI while on tour to England in 1937 with the Czech Philharmonic; these were two movements from Smetana’s Má vlast. From 1942 to 1948 Kubelík was Music Director of the Czech Philharmonic, and in 1945 conducted Má vlast to celebrate the liberation of Prague from Nazi occupation. In 1948, the year the Communist Party took power in Czechoslovakia, Walter Legge of EMI invited him to record with the Philharmonia in London and Kubelík took this as an opportunity to defect to the West. “I am an anti-communist and an anti-fascist’, said Kubelík. ‘I do not think that artistic freedom can cope with a totalitarian regime.”. Despite invitations over the years from the regime in communist Czechoslovakia, Kubelík did not conduct again in his homeland until 1990, when – following the Czech ‘Velvet Revolution’ led by Vaclav Havel – he led Má vlast ‘ at the opening of the Prague Spring Festival. This was the only time Kubelík conducted in public after 1985, when he retired as a result of ill health. Over his international career, Kubelík held the position of Music Director for relatively brief and sometimes controversial periods with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (1950-53), the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden (1955-58) and the Metropolitan Opera, New York (1971-74). By contrast, he spent nearly 20 years as Music Director of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in the 1960s and 70s.