Karel Ančerl was born into a Jewish family in Bohemia, made music while imprisoned with his family in the Theresienstadt concentration camp and survived Auschwitz, where his wife and son were murdered. By the 1950s, whenchief conductor of the Czech Philharmonic, making some superb recordings for the Supraphon label, polishing their sound and reputation and touring beyond the Iron Curtain. Meanwhile, Ančerl’s exact contemporary Herbert von Karajan was in charge of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, and for me, this () divides around their two orchestras. The post-war Vienna Symphony couldn’t equal the quality and character of the Czech Philharmonic, and it shows. Ančerl’s Tchaikovsky recordings in Vienna seem routine, urbane, perfectly serviceable, but none of those words are what I want to hear about Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony or . And why would you spend time with Ančerl’s Vienna recordings of Dvořák’s ‘New World’ Symphony and , or Smetana’s , when his Czech recordings feel so much more vital?
