The Most Famous
CONDUCTORS from Czechia
This page contains a list of the greatest Czech Conductors. The pantheon dataset contains 97 Conductors, 4 of which were born in Czechia. This makes Czechia the birth place of the 11th most number of Conductors behind Poland and France.
Top 4
The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the most legendary Czech Conductors of all time. This list of famous Czech Conductors is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity.
1. Rafael Kubelík (1914 - 1996)
With an HPI of 59.31, Rafael Kubelík is the most famous Czech Conductor. His biography has been translated into 27 different languages on wikipedia.
Rafael Jeroným Kubelík, KBE (29 June 1914 – 11 August 1996) was a Czech conductor and composer. The son of a distinguished violinist, Jan Kubelík, he was trained in Prague and made his debut with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra at the age of 19. Having managed to maintain a career in Czechoslovakia under the Nazi occupation, he refused to work under what he considered a "second tyranny" after the Communist Czechoslovak coup d'état of 1948, and took refuge in Britain. He became a Swiss citizen in 1967. Kubelík was music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (1950–53), musical director of The Royal Opera, Covent Garden (1955–58). In 1957, he conducted and recorded the World premiere Berlioz's Les Troyens. From 1961 to 1979, he was music director of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, and was a frequent guest conductor for leading orchestras in Europe and America. As a composer, Kubelík wrote in a neo-romantic idiom. His works include five operas, three symphonies, chamber music, choral works, and songs.
2. Václav Neumann (1920 - 1995)
With an HPI of 54.45, Václav Neumann is the 2nd most famous Czech Conductor. His biography has been translated into 25 different languages.
Václav Neumann (29 October 1920 – 2 September 1995) was a Czech conductor, violinist, violist, and opera director.
3. Karel Ančerl (1908 - 1973)
With an HPI of 52.71, Karel Ančerl is the 3rd most famous Czech Conductor. His biography has been translated into 18 different languages.
Karel Ančerl (11 April 1908 – 3 July 1973) was a Czechoslovak conductor and composer, renowned especially for his performances of contemporary music and for his interpretations of music by Czech composers. Ančerl was born into a prosperous Jewish family in the village of Tučapy in southern Bohemia. After graduating from the Prague Conservatory, he pursued his conducting studies under Hermann Scherchen and Václav Talich. He was the assistant conductor at the Munich premiere of Alois Hába's quarter-tone opera Mother (1931) and conducted the orchestra of the avant-garde theatre Osvobozené divadlo in Prague (1931–1933). Conducting work for Czechoslovak radio was interrupted by World War II which resulted in his being imprisoned with his family in the Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1942 and then sent to Auschwitz in 1944. Unlike his wife and young son, Ančerl survived Auschwitz. After the war, Ančerl conducted for Radio Prague until 1950, when he became artistic director of the Czech Philharmonic, a post he held successfully for eighteen years. Following the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia, Ančerl emigrated to Toronto, Canada, where he worked as music director of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra until his death in 1973. As a conductor, Ančerl helped foster a distinctly Czech orchestral sound, both within the Czech Philharmonic and elsewhere. Highly regarded also as a studio artist, Ančerl made a wide range of recordings on the Supraphon label, including repertoire by various Czech composers (remastered in the Karel Ančerl Gold Edition).
4. Jiří Bělohlávek (1946 - 2017)
With an HPI of 50.44, Jiří Bělohlávek is the 4th most famous Czech Conductor. His biography has been translated into 19 different languages.
Jiří Bělohlávek, (Czech pronunciation: [jɪr̝iː bjɛloɦlaːvɛk]; 24 February 1946 – 31 May 2017) was a Czech conductor. He was a leading interpreter of Czech classical music, and became chief conductor of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra in 1990, a role he would serve on two occasions during a combined span of seven years (1990–92, 2012–17). He also served a six-year tenure as the chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra from 2006 to 2012. He gained international renown and repute for his performances of the works of Czech composers such as Antonín Dvořák and Bohuslav Martinů, and was credited as "the most profound proponent of Czech orchestral music" by Czech music specialist Professor Michael Beckerman.
Pantheon has 4 people classified as conductors born between 1908 and 1946. Of these 4, none of them are still alive today. The most famous deceased conductors include Rafael Kubelík, Václav Neumann, and Karel Ančerl.
Deceased Conductors
Go to all Rankings
Rafael Kubelík
1914 - 1996
HPI: 59.31
Václav Neumann
1920 - 1995
HPI: 54.45
Karel Ančerl
1908 - 1973
HPI: 52.71
Jiří Bělohlávek
1946 - 2017
HPI: 50.44
Which Conductors were alive at the same time? This visualization shows the lifespans of the 3 most globally memorable Conductors since 1700.
