Zdeněk Mácal with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra during his tenure as music director, which ran from 1993 to 2002.
In Saturday’s (10/27) New Jersey Arts, Jay Lustig writes, “Zdeněk Mácal, music director of New Jersey Symphony from 1993 to 2002 … and then the chief conductor of the Prague-based Czech Philharmonic from 2003 to 2007, died in Prague on Oct. 25, at the age of 87. New Jersey Symphony posted on social media that … ‘During Mácal’s tenure with the symphony he increased the number of commissions and premieres the orchestra performed, and facilitated the Symphony’s recordings of the works of his compatriot Antonín Dvořák, including a Grammy-winning recording….’ That [1999] Grammy-winning album featured Dvořák’s Requiem and his Symphony No. 9 … It won in the Best Engineered Album, Classical, category. An obituary published yesterday on the Czech website ceskenoviny.cz states … Mácal was born in Brno, Czechoslovakia; conducted ‘more than 170 major orchestras, including the Berlin Philharmonic, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, and the Chicago and Boston Symphony Orchestras.’ ” Mácal was music director of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra from 1986 to 1993. He took the Milwaukee Symphony on tour to the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. and Carnegie Hall in New York City, and made a popular recording of Smetana’s Má vlast for Telarc Records in 1991. During his tenure, the Milwaukee Symphony’s concerts were broadcast on hundreds of radio stations. Monday’s (10/30) Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has a gallery of photos of Macal’s time as music director of the Milwaukee Symphony.
