Rudolf Firkušný (11 February 1912 – 19 July 1994)

Piano virtuoso and an honorary doctor of philosophy at Charles University Rudolf Firkušný was born in Napajedla as the youngest of three children of a local notary. When he was three, his father died and his mother took their family to Brno, where the boy’s extraordinary talent soon became very evident. His extraordinary keennes for music, excellent musical ear and memory fascinated Leoš Janáček, who put him through a thorough test and decided on his further musical education, over which he took personal supervision. He himself taught him music theory and the basics of composition, while professor Růžena Kurzová at the Brno Conservatory and later her husband prof. Vilém Kurz at the Prague Master School took care of his development in piano playing. Despite the undeniable success on domestic and foreign stages, the path to which he started at the early age of eight with a public concert in Prague, Rudolf Firkušný systematically worked on his pianistic improvement and overall music education even after finishing his conservatory studies. In the 1930s, he completed a summer course in Italy with the excellent piano teacher Arthur Schnabel, and continued his composition studies after Janáček’s death in the classes of Rudolf Karel and Josef Suk in Prague. The end of the 1920s and 1930s saw Rudolf Firkušný play a number of foreign concerts in Vienna, Germany, Italy, France and England, and in 1938 he stood on American soil for the first time. Critics from that time agree that the young Czech pianist was already a world-level artist by the age of twenty. Until the beginning of the Nazi occupation, Firkušný kept returning home between his trips abroad – to Brno, where he had his family and loyal friends, for whom he always found time to play a piece in the Besední dům.

Unaware that it was to be an almost permanent move, he left Brno in May 1939 for Paris, where he joined a group of Czech artists, including Bohuslav Martinů and the promising Brno composer Vítězslava Kaprálová. Throughout the following year, 1940, Firkušný tried with his own means, i.e. the music of the Czech Masters Smetana, Dvořák, Janáček, Suk and contemporary composers – Martinů, Kaprálová and Bořkovec – to stir up the consciousness of the Western European public in favour of the invaded Czechoslovakia.

In the 1940s, he had to fight hard for the position of concert pianist in the United States. He succeeded among the extremely strong competition of European emigrants and domestic American artists. He won not only due to his artful piano skills, which were said to have the brilliance, elegance and stylistic interpretation of a wide repertoire from Bach to the contemporary American contemporaries Copland and Barber, but especially thanks to the extraordinary emotional depth and his Czech repertoire. Just as he reintroduced the forgotten Dvořák’s Piano Concerto to the Americans at his first major performance in Chicago on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Dvořák’s birth, so he later premiered piano compositions by Smetana, Suk, Janáček and his good friend Martinů on both American continents, in Australia as well as in cultural centres of Asia. Listeners, including fellow pianists, attended his concerts to learn about the unknown works of Czech masters, which resounded in his hands in their full beauty and seriousness of the artistic message.

Perhaps the biggest paradox is that the greatest Czech pianist was an American citizen. Rudolf Firkušný voluntarily chose the difficult fate of an emigrant, so that he could freely spread the fame of Czech music on all continents. For more than 40 years, he refused with great self-denial to perform on the concert stages of his native country, which did not offer its inhabitants the basic rights of a free man. He distanced himself uncompromisingly from the totalitarian regime and did not return until after its fall.

Graduation date 7 October 1993

Lecture by Rudolf Firkušný  

Lecture delivered by Rudolf Firkušný on the occasion of the award of an honorary doctorate of JAMU on 7 October 1993

Your Magnificence,
Dear Rector,
Spectabiles,
Deans and Vice-Deans,
Honorabilis Graduation Officer,
Dear Guests,

Allow me to thank you for the doctorate awarded to me by the Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Brno. I am aware of what an honour you are bestowing me with. I cannot but mention the three reasons for which I particularly enjoy this award. I receive, first of all, this honorary title in Brno, a city with which an important time of my adolescence and maturation is connected and which I consider to be the starting point of my artistic journey. I am always happy to return to Brno, even though it was often only in thoughts when I was travelling the world, in memories of my friends, the conservatory, the streets, squares and parks of the city, its churches – and even God has allowed me to marry a wife who comes from the Moravian metropolis.
Secondly, it is the doctorate itself – the first, as I was informed, which art schools can now award according to new customs – and it is awarded to me by an academy named after my beloved teacher Leoš Janáček. Today, I realise what a privilege it was to study with this excellent composer and a highly sensitive person. There are few of us who remember his face, his movements, the melody of his speech. I like to be among those who try to return their admiration for the great composer Janáček by interpreting his work.

There is no need to convince you of the joy that fills me throughout my life as I can watch how his creative authority has been rising among cultures worldwide.

Finally, the third reason I feel so intense about this festive moment is the connection of Brno and its higher education with the local Alma Mater, Masaryk University. Because the name of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, his activities and thoughts, those are another of the basic symbols in my life. Indeed, it was he who taught our entire nation, especially our post-war generation, a new way of living in democracy, a man whose love for the truth was an example to us, whose consistent respect for human freedom was more than just practical advice for us; it became a guideline for life. Faithfulness to his ideals was at the heart of my decision to try to liberate our country from the clasp of the dictator’s cold hand during the Nazi occupation and to go to exile once again shortly after achieving this objective, when Czechoslovakia fell under the yoke of communist totalitarianism and obscurantism. Isn’t it beautiful that today, in our renewed freedom, we can join the two great personalities of our history and culture on the soil of Brno, Leoš Janáček and Tomáš G. Masaryk?
I am a man of the older times, so please allow me to quote Cato, who said that doctrina est fructus dulcis radicis amarae – the roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet. That bitterness applies to the volume of work done, which is never easy and without sacrifice of time, self-discipline, diligence and concentration. However, without the workload, the path to education is closed. Finally, it is impossible to imagine any creative activity of today without education, including artistic creation. All my life and artistic experience confirms that to me. However, it also brings joy and satisfaction from the work, a feeling that the creative effort was not and is not in vain, and even more: it keeps the mind young and fresh. So, in this regard, I dare to accept your magnificent honour, knowing all too well that it does not relieve me of the obligation to continue my education, albeit not an easy task.

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