Remember Rafael Kubelík? The son of the great Czech violinist Jan Kubelík? The music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Covent Garden Opera, and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra? The conductor of warm-hearted and lyrical interpretations of the standard and especially the Czech repertoire works? The passionately loving conductor of the first integral cycle of the symphonies of Mahler? No? Listen to this two-disc set in EMI's Great Conductors of the Twentieth Century series. Taken from every period of his postwar career, these discs are a superb introduction to Kubelík. His 1948 Martinu Fourth with the Czech Philharmonic is ecstatically dramatic. His 1953 Hindemith Symphonic Metamorphosis on Themes by Carl Maria von Weber with the Chicago Symphony is unrelentingly rhythmic. His 1960 Schubert Third with the Vienna Philharmonic is blissfully lyric. His 1964 Schumann Genoveva overture with the Berlin Philharmonic is easily the greatest performance of the work ever recorded. And his 1968 Adagio from Mahler's Symphony No. 10 is radiantly luminous, excruciatingly agonizing, and ultimately entirely transforming. EMI's remastered sound is eminently listenable in the oldest recordings, gloriously gorgeous in the more recent recordings, and as good as possible in every recording. ~ James Leonard, All Music Guide
