Kubelik

Anton Bruckner - Sinfonie Nr. 3 d-moll
Symphonie-Orchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks / Rafael Kubelik
SACD ISO (Stereo) | 24B/88,2kHz FLAC | Full Artwork | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Audite # 92.543 | Country/Year: Germany 2005, 1962
Genre: Classical | Style: Romantic, Symphonic

"…Still, the 1962 is not first rank for todays standards but is very good for the period. Recommended." ~sa-cd.net

When Rafael Kubelik's 1977 recording of Beethoven's Missa Solemnis was finally released in 1994, the pantheon of great Missa Solemnis recordings had to make room for another member. Along with superb singing from the four soloists and the chorus, the superlative playing from the Bavarian Radio Symphony, and the supreme conducting from Kubelik himself, all the things that make the Missa Solemnis great the profundity, the spirituality, and the overwhelming sense that the numinous is imminent are present in Kubelik's interpretation.

Kubelík’s star began to wane in the years before World War I. Some felt he had gone off the boil but it was more a question of his public turning to new idols, Elman and Vecsey. In 1915 he retired to take composition seriously, not resuming his concert career until 1920. He toured Britain 20 times from 1900 to 1934 (packing the Royal Albert Hall with 7,000 people in 1926) and the U.S. many times up to 1938 (6,000 heard him at the New York Hippodrome in 1920-21). He commanded a wide range of music and in Central Europe he is remembered as a great musician. He died in Prague on 5 December 1940. The main fruits of Kubelík’s five-year break were his first three Violin Concertos, published in Prague in 1920. Of the eventual series of six, Pavel Šporcl says: ‘They are technically very demanding and musically extremely interesting.’ The First Concerto in C major, which he plays here, is a melodious Late Romantic work, well tailored to a front-line virtuoso’s strengths, and it should not have fallen out of the repertoire. Kubelík emerged from his purdah to première it at the Grosse Musikvereinssaal in Vienna on 29 January 1917, Nedbal conducting the Tonkünstler Orchestra.

Rafael Kubelik was one of the 20th century's most brilliant and charismatic conductors, yet under-appreciated because of his reluctance to embrace the "star" system. Here he is seen working with the great orchestras of Berlin, Vienna and Amsterdam, and featured in a bonus biographical documentary acclaimed for "stylish camera-work and a counterpoint of image, word and music reflecting Kubelik's spontaneity, exuberance, trust in emotion, and ability, even in tailcoat, to retain his warmth and humanity" (Süddeutsche Zeitung).

Rafael Kubelik truly remains a conductor for the here and now, with his classic recordings of Beethoven, Dvorak, Mahler, Janáček, Orff and Smetana cycles setting the gold standard. His approach to phrasing and keen attention to orchestral inner frameworks left no musical stone unturned. Kubelík is the last of the great conductors from Deutsche Grammophon's early stereo age to receive the "Complete Edition" treatment.