This week, The Music Treasury will be presenting works by Czech conductor Henry Swoboda. An active performer on various stages in Europe and the United States, he was also involved in the recording industry, capturing performances of many musicians now of historic value.
Dr Gary Lemco will be hosting the show, airing from 19:00 to 21:00 PDT on KZSU from Stanford University, and concurrently streamed at kzsu.stanford.edu.
Henry Swoboda, conductor and musicologist
Henry Swoboda (October 29, 1897 – August 13, 1990) was a Czech conductor and musicologist. He made many recordings for the Westminster label, including the first commercially available record of Bruckner’s Sixth Symphony. He worked from 1927 to 1931 for Electrola, Berlin and later as conductor for Radio-Prag. He was a Guest professor at University of Southern California between 1931–1939 and emigrated 1939 to the USA.
Swoboda’s pre-war career had involved administration and organization as well as conducting. Post-war he was one of the founder-members of the Westminster recording company in 1949. He recorded prolifically for Westminster in the early 1950s as well as for Concert Hall and its associated Musical Masterpieces Society and La Guilde International du Disque. On one slightly later recording (1959) he accompanied Ruth Slenczynska in Saint-Saëns’ second piano concerto, conducting the Symphony of the Air. This was issued on Decca.
Given Swoboda’s part-ownership of Westminster, this might look like a partly vanity career. If there was any element of this, he used it well. Of the works he set down for Westminster, several were first recordings and, apart from some concertos with noted soloists, practically none were easily obtainable in other versions at the time. Concert Hall, and in particular the Musical Masterpieces Society, were interested in making available cheap versions of repertoire works. Swoboda set down a number of popular items for them, in particular symphonies by Haydn and Mozart. Westminster also undertook—presumably under Swoboda’s influence—the promotion and preservation of the art of several conductors not otherwise well documented by the record industry, especially Hermann Scherchen. The Westminster recordings were mainly—and, in Swoboda’s case, exclusively—made in Vienna with the Symphony Orchestra or the State Opera Orchestra. Some of the earlier Concert Hall and Musical Masterpieces Society recordings use pseudonymous groups such as the “Concert Hall Symphony Orchestra.” Properly identified orchestras were the Winterthur Symphony Orchestra and the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra. The latter was a pick-up band using players from various Dutch radio orchestras, unrelated to the present-day orchestra of the same name.
Clara Haskil was not the only distinguished soloist happy to be accompanied by Swoboda. He proved an excellent collaborator in every case, especially with Louis Kaufmann and Peter Rybar.
Program List:
R. Strauss: Macbeth, Op. 23
Ibert: Capriccio
Saint-Saens: Piano Concerto No. 2 in G Minor, Op. 22 (w/Slenczynska)
Smetana: Wallenstein’s Camp
Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 3 in D Major, Op. 29 “Polish”
