(Leader, Reginald Stead )
Conducted by Vilem Tausky
The Czech composer, Karcl Boleslav Jirak, who was born in Prague in 1891, studied with Novak and J. B. Foerster. During the First World War and the nineiteentwenties he held several conductor's posts in Czechoslovakia and Germany, and from 1930 to 1934 was professor at the Prague Conservatoire. Shortly after the last war he settled in the United States, and is at present living in Chicago, where he is a professor at the Roosevelt College of Music.
His Fifth Symphony was written between
October 1948 and March 1949, and was awarded a prize in the Edinburgh International Festival Competition (the other prizewinner being William Wordsworth, with his Second Symphony). Jirak's symphony, like Wordsworth's, was first performed at the 1951 Festival by the Scottish National Orchestra, under Walter Susskind. Less uncompromising in style than many of his works, it is scored for a large orchestra and is in four movements. The first, in orthodox sonata-form, has a slow introduction; the second, an Andante, is a strict passacaglia; the third is a Scherzo; the last opens with a slow introduction based on that of the first movement, and makes use of themes heard earlier in the work. Deryck Cooke