Karel Ančerl
Czech conductor
Died when: 65 years 83 days (782 months)Star Sign: Aries
Karel Ancerl (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.
Ancerl was born into a prosperous Jewish family in the village of Tucapy 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, Ancerl survived Auschwitz.After the war, Ancerl 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, Ancerl emigrated to Toronto, Canada, where he worked as music director of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra until his death in 1973.
As a conductor, Ancerl helped foster a distinctly Czech orchestral sound, both within the Czech Philharmonic and elsewhere.Highly regarded also as a studio artist, Ancerl made a wide range of recordings on the Supraphon label, including repertoire by various Czech composers (remastered in the Karel Ancerl Gold Edition).
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