Jiří Bělohlávek / conductor

The Czech conductor Jiří Bělohlávek (1946–2017) was one of the world's leading performing artists from the turn of the millennium, and thanks to the important posts he held before his artistic career came to a premature end, his discography is also very rich. He devoted himself to music from his early childhood, singing in the world-famous Kühn Children's Choir. He studied at the Prague Conservatory and the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (besides conducting, he originally studied cello). His teachers included Sergiu Celibidache, in whose master classes he took part several times. He attracted the attention of the musical community in 1971 as a finalist at the Herbert von Karajan International Conducting Competition. Already at that time, it was clear that he was growing into an extraordinarily talented, musically diverse, and promising artist. This was fully borne out by a series of successful concerts on important Czech stages and the invaluable experience he gained as Václav Neumann's assistant conductor with the Czech Philharmonic. The Brno Philharmonic promptly hired him as its conductor in 1972 (the artistic director was Jiří Waldhans). His first recordings on the Supraphon label (and on the Panton label, which was still a separate company at the time) date from that period. Ladislav Šíp, the executive director of the Prague Symphony Orchestra, showed even greater foresight in 1977, when he asked maestro Bělohlávek to take over as chief conductor of that orchestra at the age of thirty-one. This was a daring move by management that disproved all of the doubters' concerns and demonstrated the benefits of engaging a young, talented artist as soon as possible for such an important task. For the orchestra, carefully built up over a period of thirty years by Václav Smetáček, this was the beginning of a new, highly successful era that was of fundamental importance for its future. During this time, the orchestra started taking on even the most demanding artistic tasks at home and abroad. For Jiří Bělohlávek, his thirteen years at the helm of the Prague Symphony Orchestra were a happy period of growth, as he built himself an excellent reputation on a Europe-wide scale, so his move to the Czech Philharmonic in 1990, where he succeeded Václav Neumann, the orchestra's chief conductor for many years, was understood as something entirely natural and logical. In any case, he had been conducting the Czech Philharmonic regularly since 1981.

The 1970s and '80s became the first important epoch of his recording activities. The music of Bohuslav Martinů, still uncharted territory at the time, was predominant among those recordings, but there were also countless recordings of works by other composers from various periods. Among these, the complete set of symphonies, orchestral works, and certain concertos by Johannes Brahms was particularly outstanding. His departure from the post of chief conductor of the Czech Philharmonic in 1992 did not mean an end to their cooperation on future projects. In 1994 he founded the Prague Philharmonia, a major undertaking, and he remained its leader for many years. The orchestra made history with a whole series of paradigmatic recordings of works for strings or chamber orchestra (mostly of Czech music, but also of selected works by foreign composers). Even while working abroad (at the helm of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, making guest appearances with the Berlin Philharmonic and other leading orchestras in Europe and overseas, and from 2013 as the principal guest conductor of the Rotterdam Philharmonic), he returned regularly to “his own” former orchestras. His remarkable career as a concert artist was still developing promisingly when it reached its apex with the Czech Philharmonic, to which he returned as chief conductor and as an experienced musician of worldwide fame in 2012, beginning an era that took the orchestra to new successes on stages around the world. Sadly, fate would allow Jiří Bělohlávek only five more years of life with the Czech Philharmonic. In 2017, he succumbed to a grave illness.

www.jiribelohlavek.com