La Coruna, Spain

The new composition dedicated to García Lorca was written by Ladislav Kubík. He created a brilliant work, all the time strong, dramatic and with a great communicative force.

El Pais, Madrid

“Lament of a Warriors Wife” by Ladislav Kubík is a very interesting work with beautiful rhythmic effects.

Nerikes Allebanka, Sweden

The concert’s most impressive offering was Ladislav Kubík’s “Concerto for Winds and Percussion.”

Tallahassee Democrat

The concert’s wildest work, surprisingly, was scored for the most minimal of string orchestras and was the only piece written by a European-born and trained composer. Ladislav Kubík’s Concerto Grosso for violin, piano, and percussion is very close in form to the Baroques concertos for which it is named. At the same time, its unusual harmonies and driving, asymmetrical rhythms made it the most recognizably ‘modern’ piece of the program.

Tallahassee Democrat

Symphonic Overture by Ladislav Kubík, a pungent piece, regaled in rhythmic vitality and uncommon instrumental combinations, proved to be the festival’s most adventurous and challenging work.

Worcester Telegram

These nine works bring us a rich sonorous universe, fertile and inspired, in which there is no need for many introductions nor explanations, like the direct experience of aesthetic offerings. Two records of authentic music of our time.

Scherzo
Revista de Musica, Madrid

“Wind Harmony” is the title given by the Czech composer Ladislav Kubík (born 1946) to this year’s composition commissioned by the International Mozarteum Foundation which also indicated that the underlying idea was to address the Czech wind instrument tradition. In his “Wind Harmony” Kubík demonstrated his facility in dealing with the specific timbre and in exploiting the musicians’ technique without shattering the framework. The soloist expositions continue to be elaborated in four movements in a lively “conversation” with a rhythmic edge. The motorics of the composition and immanent balance of the tone colors are appealing

Salzburger Nachrichten

The six-movement work which is capable of filtering the encouraging effect of colors from the melodious octet grouping produced a favorable response from the audience. The Alban Berg-like melisma, the octave doubling, running through all the registers in combination with second-interval chords led in parallels constitute a mixture which form an appealing, modernistic whole, interspersed with Mozart quotations and - listen, surprise, surprise - of Eder provenance.

The success for Kubík was as kind and pleasant as it was for the ensuing performance of the Collegium, which musically without a great deal of sophistication gave a buoyant rendering of Mozart and Myslivecek. Agreeable summer evening music.

Die Presse

Kubík’s Sinfonietta, the other world premiére, is another impressive foray into instrumental timbres and dramatic possibilities. The ensemble is intimate, only 19 players, and the atmospheres range from aggressive utterances and playful gestures to ethereal sighs. Kubík builds to vibrant climaxes with meticulous craftsmanship. Every phrase sounds like an inevitable extension of what happened before. Hints of Berg’s lyricism and Schoenberg’s structural command are suggested within Kubík’s boldly individual style. The performance placed the score in its most vivid light.

Cleveland Plain Dealer

The Elegy in Two Movements for solo cello by guest composer Ladislav Kubík of Florida State University was a sure bet. Superbly played by Craig Hultgren and grippingly intense, the 1995 work plumbed the instrument’s expressive depth in a language urgent and inventive. Those previously unfamiliar with the piece could only marvel at the series of powerful gestures that passed before our ears. Who knows what another hearing or two might reveal?

The Birmingham News

Kubík’s Trio, Metamorphoses, for clarinet, cello, and piano is one of his most impressive chamber works, with a highly charged narrative and unyielding tension, supported by an enormous soundscape and magnificent orchestration. (an ideal stylization of the clarinet and cello duo). All of this is intensified by the ravishing gradations, which in the toccata-style Allegro impetuoso is blazing white-hot.

Hudební Rozhledy, Prague, Czech Republic

Kubík’s Sinfonietta No. 3, “Gong”, for solo mezzo-soprano, mixed choir, orchestra, and electronics on the poems of Rainer Maria Rilke is a work of ravishing effect, perfectly balanced in macro- and micro- structures. The connection of the composer’s work with the text, and the mystical and hymn-like character of music is akin to the atmosphere of the Rilke’s era; revealing Kubík’s genuine penetration to the very core of Rilke’s beautiful poetry.

A Tempo, Prague, Czech Republic

The abbreviated Concerto Breve is an eight-minute condensation of the gestures of the traditional piano concerto – perhaps hinting at Bartók and Prokofiev, modern in idiom yet directly accessible.

Records International

Kubik’s Sinfonietta No. 2, “Jacob’s Well” is a highly dramatic work full of conflict. The large orchestra with extended percussion section is employed to great effect, yet the strongest narrative thread is sustained through the expressive solo passages. There is a program, of sorts: a progression from the brutality of the world toward a spiritual resolution. The idiom is modern but tonality is abundantly present, and there is a very Romantic-era sense of the conflict between darkness and light, triumph and despair.

Records International

Songs of Zhivago sets the poems by Pasternak in a remarkably authentic-sounding Russian idiom (given that the composer is Czech-born and American-domiciled and the poems are set in English translation). The characteristic melancholy and the confrontation between an intimate emotion and inexorable destructive forces are captured superbly in Kubík’s evocative music, alternating violent drama and resigned sadness, predominantly tragic in tone.

Records International

In 1958 Boris Pasternak, the author of the novel Doctor Zhivago, received the Nobel Prize but was compelled by the Soviet regime to turn it down. The Czech-born composer Ladislav Kubík, who lives in the United States sees the poems that Pasternak placed at the end of his novel as a self-portrait and used it to create his own magnum opus.

Qualiton: World Premiere Recordings