The recent death of conductor Rafael Kubelik severed Chicago’s last tie to the kind of musical leadership that once enriched America’s audience for symphonic music on records and off.
In his three years at the head of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (1950-53), Kubelik was a true music director, having more sustained contact with the city’s musical affairs than any of his successors while playing a key role in the development of commercial recordings. (He died Aug. 12 at the age of 82.)
At age 36, he came to a post that would never again be offered to anyone so young. He was at once a conductor, composer, instrumentalist, crusader and political activist. That he left Chicago amid petty attacks and returned without acrimony, becoming one of the city’s most beloved guest conductors, only affirmed his human and artistic stature.
In Kubelik’s first season with the CSO, he conducted 67 concerts at Orchestra Hall, 12 radio broadcasts from area high schools and 15 programs in Iowa, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin. No permanent conductor after him gave as many performances during as little time.
Throughout his tenure, Kubelik and the orchestra committed 12 works to monaural recordings that justly became famous for their performances and realism of sound. The accounts of seven pieces–Brahms, Dvorak, Mozart and Tchaikovsky symphonies plus Modeste Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition” in the orchestration by Maurice Ravel–had their first CD release a year ago in Japan. Mercury Records’ domestic issue next month will include Bela Bartok’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, Bedrich Smetana’s complete “Ma Vlast” and the Mussorgsky-Ravel.
From his first press conference, Kubelik promised repertory with areas of special concentration, including seldom-played pieces by familiar composers, contemporary music with an emphasis on works by Americans and various timely commemorations.
He provoked criticism simply by keeping his word. Kubelik presented in Chicago 66 premieres, ranging from masterworks by Bach, Mozart and Haydn to such now-familiar modern scores as the Bartok Music for Strings, Aaron Copland’s Third Symphony, Leos Janacek’s Sinfonietta and Francis Poulenc’s Organ Concerto.
Kubelik later said, “Most everything I played I liked. But I also had (a responsibility) to play things that were not to my liking. As a music director, one cannot choose only what one likes. One sometimes has to sacrifice oneself and play certain things one thinks are important for the public to hear.”
As happened with Leopold Stokowski in Philadelphia, critics approved neither the quantity nor the quality of Kubelik’s contemporary selections, though the most challenging pieces he led were from early decades of the century–Arnold Schoenberg’s “Five Pieces for Orchestra,” Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto–and his later choices should not have given informed listeners trouble.
In any event, Kubelik was undeterred in his crusade for unfamiliar music. He presented symphonies by Anton Bruckner and Gustav Mahler well before they became part of the standard repertory in the United States. And unlike some conductors today who perform contemporary pieces only to gain support for themselves in the composers’ countries of origin, Kubelik brought new Czech, French and German music to America and took the ultra-American symphonies of Roy Harris to Europe.
Another of his adventures–even today virtually unknown and, therefore, unsung–was to make the first experimental stereo recordings with a North American orchestra since the mid-1930s. Parts of the Mercury sessions for “Ma Vlast,” Mozart’s “Prague” Symphony, Schoenberg’s “Five Pieces” and Hindemith’s “Symphonic Metamorphosis on Themes of Carl Maria von Weber” were also recorded privately in stereo, and the sound of the master tapes is phenomenal.
Because these performances never were issued commercially, the earliest stereophonic recordings with the CSO always have been attributed to 1954 and Fritz Reiner. Yet Kubelik allowed the orchestra to be captured in stereo a year earlier, and the results have a fidelity to color and nuance that surpasses the best modern digital recordings.
Then, as in his long tenure (1961-80) with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Kubelik’s hallmark was a full, warm tone that remained unforced and transparent. Interpretations were open-hearted but seldom went over the top. The absence of any extremes, emotional or analytical, generally kept Kubelik’s performances from achieving the outsize quality common to work of more celebrated “star” conductors, though his exuded a marvelous fresh healthiness that gave its own thrill upon prolonged acquaintance.
On a visit to the CSO, some time after his 13-year absence and joyful return in 1966, Kubelik was rehearsing the opening of “The Moldau” from “Ma Vlast.” One, two, three times the flute began its flowing solo at the start of the piece. Each time, Kubelik stopped to ask that it be played stronger. Finally, the flutist explained he played as he did because the music represented only a spring that would slowly gather force to become the great river. Kubelik replied, “Yes, but it’s a Czech spring.”
Despite his wandering from London to Chicago to Munich, New York and Switzerland, Kubelik never allowed himself to forget the heritage that was the source of his own strength as an artist. Often he spoke against the Soviet brutalization of Czechoslovakia and frequently rejected invitations to return until the regime was driven from power. He was a musician of deep conscience, setting his art against all forms of atrocity for more than 40 years before communism fell and he again could stand, baton upraised, before his beloved Czech Philharmonic.
Very different applications of principle led him to leave both opera houses at which he was director. In 1958, Thomas Beecham said no one but a British conductor should head London’s Covent Garden, and Kubelik immediately resigned rather than accept the xenophobia of a colleague. Then, in 1973, scarcely a year after becoming the first music director of the Metropolitan Opera, he again departed when it was clear the company could not guarantee casts of singers would remain the same from first to last performance. He saw anarchy looming earlier than even Erich Leinsdorf, who later would end a half-century relationship with the Met for the same reason.
Kubelik seldom performed as a pianist late in life but continued to write music as he had done since age 14. An endearing natural modesty, however, forbade him to conduct much of his output. Only after 1980 did he begin programming his works more regularly as a guest conductor. The feelings about composition he expressed around that time reveal the bedrock of his nobility.
“It’s important for a composer to be willing to tell what he really feels,” Kubelik said. “And he should create structures that are more than cerebral, that have emotion, interior life.
“If that doesn’t happen, the work will be dead from the beginning. But if a composer tries to find the right sound and the right shape for something he’s convinced he must say through music, then it will be a creative work. Then one should listen to it even if it’s not good. It can be bad, but the main thing is it should be honest.”
THE BEST OF RAFAEL KUBELIK
Along with the upcoming Mercury reissues of recordings from 1951 and 1952, these represent the best of Rafael Kubelik on currently available compact discs.
Bruckner: Symphony No. 8. Bavarian Radio Symphony (1963). Orfeo 203891.
Dvorak: Cello Concerto. Pierre Fournier, cello; Philharmonia Orchestra (1948). Testament 1016.
Foerster: Symphony No. 4. Czech Philharmonic (1948). Supraphon 1912-2.
Hindemith: Mathis der Maler (opera). Kozut, T. Schmidt, Wagemann, Cochran, Grobe, M. Schmidt, Fischer-Dieskau, Feldhoff, Malta, Meven; Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Chorus (1970s). EMI Classics 55237.
Janacek: Sinfonietta. Bavarian Radio Symphony (1971). DGG 437254-2.
Janacek: Jenufa. Hillebrecht, Varnay, Cox, Cochran; Bavarian State Opera Orchestra, Chorus (1970). Myto 904.22.
Kubelik: Cantate without Words for Orchestra; Inventions and Interludes for Children’s Chorus, 4 Oboes and 4 Trumpets; Orphikon. Bavarian Radio Symphony and Chorus (1981, 1984, 1993). Panton 811225.
Mahler: Das Lied von der Erde; Symphony No. 9. Janet Baker, alto; Waldemar Kmentt, tenor; Bavarian Radio Symphony (1975). Originals 806.
Mozart: Piano Concertos 21 and 23. Clifford Curzon, piano; Bavarian Radio Symphony (1975). Artists 51.
Schoenberg: Piano Concerto; Violin Concerto. Alfred Brendel, piano; Zvi Zeitlin, violin. Bavarian Radio Symphony (1970s). DGG 431740-2.
Smetana: “Ma Vlast.” Czech Philharmonic (1990). Supraphon 111208.
Suk: “Asrael” Symphony. Bavarian Radio Symphony (1980s). Panton 81 1101-2.
Wagner: Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg. Janowitz, Fassbaender, Konya, Unger, Stewart, Crass, Hemsley; Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Chorus (1967). Myto 4-925-69.
