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Music Director, 1950–1953
Rafael Kubelík
Austen Field
After Artur Rodziński’s precipitous departure from Chicago in 1948, the search was begun anew for a music director, and it continued for two years while a succession of guest conductors shared the Chicago Symphony Orchestra podium. The search ended in 1950 with the appointment of 36-year-old Rafael Kubelík, son of the famous Czech violinist Jan Kubelík, and a musician and composer of enormous talent and promise. Indeed, Kubelík’s conducting skills had been compared to Wilhelm Furtwängler’s and his interest in new music was in the Thomas–Stock tradition.
Kubelík and the Orchestra collaborated with Mercury Records, for which Mercury used a Telefunken condenser microphone for the first time. Those sessions at Orchestra Hall captured landmark performances of Ravel’s orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition and Smetana’s Má vlast, among nine other works. The recordings were first reissued some 20 years later, at which time Chicago Sun-Times music critic Robert Marsh wrote, “In the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s long recording career, these were the first discs for which no apologies need to be made, which capture fully the distinctive sound of the ensemble and its hall, and make the artistic stature of the then 60-year-old organization plain.”
Rafael Kubelík rehearsing the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in Orchestra Hall in 1950
When Kubelík’s appointment was announced, a $75,000 renovation effort was launched in anticipation. Daniel H. Burnham, Jr., the son of the Hall’s architect, and interior designer Herbert Gayer were selected to lead the refurbishment. Chicago’s Daily News described the new look: “Instead of the predominating beige and gold-leaf color of the last century… the concert hall has soft gray walls, the proscenium arch is white, the back wall of the stage is painted in Wedgwood blue.”
Originally founded as Harry Zelzer Concert Management, the Allied Arts Corporation presented countless concerts at Orchestra Hall between 1937 and 1977. (Assumed by the Orchestral Association in 1978 after Zelzer’s retirement, the series name was changed to Symphony Center Presents at the beginning of the 1997–98 season.) This advertisement from early 1951 illustrates the caliber of artists typically featured.
Jascha Heifetz was a frequent visitor to the stage of Orchestra Hall, appearing with the Orchestra on numerous occasions between 1918 and 1956. For his February 1953 appearances, he performed Beethoven’s Violin Concerto with Kubelík. (Heifetz required, as a condition of his concert contracts, that he appear last on the program.)
Rafael Kubelík, along with assistant conductor George Schick, onstage with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1951
Oscar Chicago
MUSSORGSKY/Ravel Pictures at an Exhibition
Mercury (1951)
SMETANA Má vlast
Mercury (1952)
Rafael Kubelík and Roy Harris
During his three-year tenure, Kubelík introduced 60 new compositions to Chicago audiences. In November 1952, he conducted the world premiere performances of prominent American composer Roy Harris’ Seventh Symphony.
Rafael Kubelík’s last appearance with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra was the Gala Centennial Finale (a replication of the Orchestra’s first program) on October 18, 1991. Kubelík conducted the work by his Czech countryman Antonín Dvořák — the Husitská Overture — and was overwhelmed by the storm of applause at the conclusion of the performance.
Jim Steere
All images from the collections of the Rosenthal Archives of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association unless otherwise noted.
