Rafael Kubelík
Rafael Kubelík was a Czech conductor and composer. He was born in Býchory on 29 June 1914, the son of violinist Jan Kubelík and Hungarian countess Anna Julie Marie Szell von Besseno. The sixth child in his family, he studied the violin with his father and graduated from the Prague Conservatory in 1933.
From 1939 to 1941, Kubelík was musical director of the Brno Opera. After the Second World War, he helped organize the Prague Spring festival in 1946. He moved abroad in 1948 and returned to Prague in 1990 for a later edition of the festival.
Kubelík was musical director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra from 1950 to 1953 and of Covent Garden from 1955 to 1958. From 1961 to 1979, he was chief conductor of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, and from 1971 to 1974 he was musical director of the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
His repertoire included symphony cycles by Schumann, Beethoven, Brahms, Mahler, and Dvořák, as well as Dvořák's overtures and symphonic poems. He also performed operas by Mozart, Verdi, and Wagner, and works by Smetana, Bartók, Dvořák, Janáček, and Martinů. He was inducted into Gramophone magazine's Hall of Fame and received the Léonie Sonning Music Prize in 1983 and the Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medal in 1995. Brno and Prague named him an honorary citizen in 1990.
Kubelík died on 11 August 1996 in Kastanienbaum, near Lucerne, Switzerland. He was buried at Vyšehrad Cemetery in Prague.