Today is the centenary of Karel Ančerl's birth.  It's being trumpeted rather less widely and forcefully than the ongoing KarajanFest.  Yet for me Ančerl was certainly one of the great conductors of the last century: musically and technically astonishingly gifted, but with a warmth, depth of humanity and moral strength that eluded many of his more celebrated contemporaries.  He raised the Czech Philharmonic orchestra to extraordinary heights during his time at the helm.

And of course, while Karajan was astutely building his career, Ančerl was enduring the horrors of Terezín and Auschwitz.

This evening I'll be listening to Ančerl's recordings of Janáček's Taras Bulba and Glagolitic Mass, Mahler's Ninth Symphony, and probably some Stravinsky and Dvořák too.

As far as I'm concerned one of the very greatest conductors, without qualification. Thanks so much for mentioning it, opilec: it would have passed me by.

So his Mahler 9 is now spinning at Château Knoop. All I had on me but it will do. (As it happens I had to give a lecture on Mahler a little while back. I thought they should actually hear a big continuous span of music at least once in their lives so the last half an hour consisted of the last movement of Ančerl's Mahler 9.)

Besides the obvious Czech candidates what he did of Shostakovich and Prokofiev is also extraordinary. Not only epic things either: I don't know another Prokofiev Classical symphony that comes close to his.

Have heard very little of Karel Ancerl for many years but one of my oldest vinyl LPs is of his selection of Brahms' Hungarian Dances and Dvorak's Slavonic Dances.  I bought it around 1969 and it's on a Fontana stereo, playable mono record.

Ian.