In memoriam: Czech conductor and Knight of British Empire Libor Pešek
The world-renowned Czech conductor Libor Pešek has died at the age of 89. In a career spanning seven decades, Mr. Pešek, who was best-known for his interpretations of Czech music, helmed orchestras across Europe and headed the Czech Philharmonic, the Czech National Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Liverpool Orchestra in Britain.
Libor Pešek was born in Prague in 1933. He studied conducting at the Academy of Music in Prague and also played the piano, cello and trombone.
In 1958 he founded the Prague Chamber Harmony, a wind ensemble focusing on works by young contemporary composers, which he led until 1964, and which helped establish his conducting career in the former Czechoslovakia.
Later he helmed several Czech orchestras as well as orchestras abroad, mainly in the Netherlands, and served as a guest conductor at the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, championing lesser-known Czech composers such as Josef Suk and Vítězslav Novák.
In 1987 Libor Pešek was appointed as the chief conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra in Britain. This is how he remembered the decade-long cooperation with the orchestra in an interview for Czech Radio in 2019.
“When I came to Liverpool I told myself that I would not promote anything Czech. In the end it turned out that they wanted more and more Czech music. It got to the point that after three years one of the London critics wrote that the Liverpool orchestra was the best Czech-sounding orchestra in Britain.”
Pešek’s tenure at the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra was considered by many to be the peak of his career.
For his work with the orchestra, Libor Pešek was made an honorary Knight of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II. However, the conductor himself described the process of building up an orchestra as the biggest achievement of his career, as he told Czech Radio.
“I’ve always dreamed, since I was young, of building up my own orchestra. I probably built up four or five orchestras and that is what I see as my legacy to music today.
“I wasn’t particularly musically gifted. I would say I was generally an artistically gifted person who could do all sorts of things.
“But I think there are certain moments in life that push you without your own will somewhere you wouldn’t dream of going. When I look at it today, I believe that some things are simply meant to happen.”
Among other things, Libor Pešek also conducted the concert on the occasion of Václav Havel’s presidential inauguration in December 1989 and in 1997 he received the Medal of Merit from the late head of state. In 2007, he was appointed Chief Conductor of the Czech National Symphony Orchestra, a position he held until 2019.
