Vladimír Válek (1935-2025)

[eschiss1]

Vladimír Válek (not, I think, to be confused with a flutist-composer of the same name), conductor of very wide sympathies, died on Sunday.  His recorded repertoire included some fairly rare works by Fibich and Suk and the piano concertos of Tomasek among many other composers and works, from the very well-known to the "obscure", from the classical to the very recent. (Just looking through my collection and through Worldcat, e.g. ...)

[semloh]

Thanks for that, Eric. To be honest, I had no idea that he was still alive.
Just checking through, I seem to have far more music under his baton than I imagined - Novak, Nedbal, etc.., plenty of fine, largely 'unsung' pieces.

[Ilja]

including the only recording yet of Hermann von Glenck's Carita Eterna symphony (and the Variationensuite), a piece that I'm unreasonably fond of. That's a relatively recent recording I believe, so he must have been active until late in life.