Karel Jirak Symphony #3 (1938)
Ostrava Symphony Orchestra
Josef Hrncir, Conductor
Private Recording(?), Date Unknown.
Unable to find a commercial digital release. From the collection of Karl Miller
If you like 20th century Late Romantic with a touch of modern to it, you will be right at home with this work.
Wikipedia Bio:Karel Boleslav Jirák (Karel Bohuslav Jirák) (*January 28, 1891 in Prague, Bohemia - †January 30, 1972 in Chicago, Illinois, USA) was a Czechoslovak composer and conductor.
Jirák was born in Prague and became a pupil of Josef Bohuslav Foerster and Vítězslav Novák at the Charles University and at music academy in Prague .
From 1915 to 1918 he was the Kapellmeister at the Hamburg Opera and worked from 1918 to 1919 as a conductor at the National Theatre in Brno and Ostrava. From 1920 to 1930, he was a composition teacher at the Prague Conservatory, and principal conductor of the Czechoslovak Radio Orchestra until 1945.
In 1947, he emigrated to the USA, where from 1948 to 1967 a professor at Roosevelt University, Chicago and in 1967 a composition teacher at the Conservatory college in Chicago. He remained in this position until 1971.
Jirák's opera was Apolonius z Tyany (Apollonius of Tyana, 1912–1913), which was initially ignored by Prague's National Theatre and later accepted under the title Žena a Bůh (The woman and the god, 1936). He wrote six symphonies and several symphonic variations. In 1952 he wrote a Symphonic Scherzo for volume. He also wrote many suites and overtures, numerous pieces of chamber music, many preludes and a Suite for organ, a Requiem, choruses, and song cycles. He was a popular and renowned musical theorist.
Bio from the Wind Repertory Project:Karel B. Jirak (born in Prague, Czech Republic, 28 January 1891; died in Chicago, IL, 30 January 1972), was a Czech composer. He studied with Vitezslav Novak and Joseph B. Foerster at Charles University and the Academy of Music in Prague. Following his studies, he was appointed conductor of the Hamburg Opera in 1915 and from 1918-19, was the conductor of the National Theater in Brno. From 1920-1930, he became professor of composition at Prague Conservatory after which time, he became music director of the Czechoslovak Radio from 1930-1945.
In 1947, he was invited to Chicago to deliver some lectures at Roosevelt University, but after the communist take-over in 1948, he decided to stay in the USA. From 1948 until 1967, he was Chairman of the Theory Department at Roosevelt University. And following that, from 1967 to 1971, he served as Professor of Composition at Chicago Conservatory College.
Karel Jirak composed over 90 works among which are 1 opera, 6 symphonies, 7 string quartets, Symphonic Variation (1941), Piano Concerto, Concerto for Violin and Chamber Orcehstra (1957), Violin Sonata, Viola Sonata, Flute Sonata, Wind Quintet (1928), Clarinet Sonata (1947), and Requiem for solo quartet, chorus, organ and orchestra (1952). He is the author of a textbook on musical form (1924) and between 1945-46 while still in Prague, wrote monographs on W. A. Mozart, Zdenek Fibich and Jan Herman, the Czech piano virtuoso. Later on, while in the USA, he wrote a small study about Antonin Dvorak for a SVU presentation.
Interesting tidbit: In searching for material about Jirak, I found this in a short bio for Elizabeth Maconchy:
As a composer, however, Maconchy was less attracted by the music of Vaughan Williams and the English pastoralists than by the central European modernism of Bartók, Janácek. Traveling to Prague, she studied with the Czech composer Karel Jirak, expanding her knowledge of this form of modernism and being particularly influenced by Bartók’s use of counterpoint.
