Rafael Kubelik

Synopsis

Today’s date in 1914 marks the birthday of famous Czech conductor Rafael Kubelík. He was the son of a very musical father, namely the violin virtuoso Jan Kubelík, known as the Czech Paganini.

Kubelík studied violin, composition, and conducting at the Prague Conservatory, and was an excellent pianist to boot — good enough to accompany his father on several concert tours. At the age of 19, he made his conducting debut with the Czech Philharmonic, and later became that orchestra’s artistic director.

In 1950, Kubelík became director of the Chicago Symphony; in 1955, the director of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; and in 1961, conductor of the Bavarian Radio Orchestra. It was with the Bavarian orchestra that he made the bulk of his recordings, including a critically-acclaimed set of the Mahler symphonies. Like Mahler, he was both a conductor and a composer.

“In public, I am practicing more as a conductor, but I could not live without composing, just as I would not be able to conduct without composing,” he said. He wrote five operas and three symphonies as well as many chamber music pieces, choral works and songs.

Rafael Kubelík died at 82 in 1996, in Lucerne, Switzerland.

Music Played in Today's Program

Rafael Kubelik (1914-1996): Orphikon: Symphony in Three Movements; Bavarian Radio Symphony; Rafael Kuybelik, conductor; Panton 1264

On This Day

Births

• 1908 - American composer Leroy Anderson, in Cambridge, Massachusetts

• 1910 - American songwriter and musical composer Frank Loesser, in New York City

• 1911 - American composer and conductor Bernard Herrmann, in New York City

• 1914 - Czech-born Swiss conductor and composer, Rafael Kubelik, in Bychiory, near Kolin

• 1924 - American composer Ezra Laderman, in Brooklyn, New York

Deaths

• 1744 - French composer André Campra, 83, at Versailles

• 1941 - Polish pianist and composer Ignace Jan Paderewski, 80, in New York City. Buried at Arlington National Cemetary in Virginia (pending the liberation of Poland during WWII) by order of President Roosevelt. He was reburied with honors in Warsaw on June 30, 1992.

Premieres

• 1888 - Wagner: Die Feen (The Fairies), in Munich at the Hoftheater. Wagner composed this opera in 1834.

• 1889 - Glazunov: Symphony No. 2, in Paris

• 1951 - Leroy Anderson: Plink, Plank, Plunk! and Fiddle-Faddle at a Decca recording session in New York City, with the composer conducting (See also June 28)

• 1962 - first modern professional staging of Moneteverdi’s opera L’Incoronazione di Poppea (The Coronation of Poppea) at the Glyndebourne Festival in England, in a version prepared and conducted by Raymond Leppard. The opera premiered in Venice in the autumn of 1642. The opera’s first stagings in the 20th century were both student productions: Smith College in Northampton, Mass, on April 27, 1927 and Oxford University, on Dec. 6, 1927.

• 1985 - Joan Tower: Island Rhythms (commissioned for the opening of Harbour Island in Tampa), by the Florida Orchestra, Irwin Hoffman, conducting

• 1997 - Esa-Pekka Salonen: Giro (revised version) for orchestra, in Porvoo (Finland), by the Avanti! Chamber Orchestra conducted by the composer

Others

• 1729 - Handel returns to London after a trip to the continent to recruit new singers for a new season of Royal Academy opera productions directed by Handel and Heidegger (Gregorian date: July 10). Earlier in the month, when in Halle, Germany, Handel had been invited by W.F. Bach to visit J.S. Bach in Leipzig, but Handel declines.

• 1769 - First documented concert in Boston conducted by the Early American composer Josiah Flagg with his militia band