Page 691 - Liverpool Philharmonic 22-23 Season Coverage Book

The new age of communist rule made the musical and cultural life Pesek relished exhilarating

and hazardous. Jazz was his main musical interest and at age 15 he bought a trombone and

taught himself to play. A year later he formed a big band, playing music by Glenn Miller and

Stan Kenton.

He retained the “best and sweetest memories” of his jazz years and considered for a time

becoming a jazz musician — though that career, with its western associations, was frowned
upon by the authorities. Pesek was absorbed into the vigorous cultural underground that did its

best to create spaces as free as possible from stifling communist control.

As a student he had a regular Monday-night theatre gig with Milos Forman (obituary, April 16,

2018), who later directed the film Amadeus. He also collaborated with Vaclav Havel, the future

president, in a Prague experimental theatre. “There were major things happening with avant-

garde theatres and [musical] ensembles,” he said. “They were small in number but not in

importance.”

He studied at the Academy of Musical Arts in Prague, where in addition to the trombone he

studied conducting, piano and cello. On graduating his mother gave him a pair of gold cufflinks

that he wore thereafter when conducting. He formed the first of several chamber groups,

including one called the Sebastian Orchestra that became a vehicle for new works. The highlight
of their existence was appearing at the Prague Spring Festival in 1961, but they disbanded when

Soviet tanks rolled into the city in 1968.

Pesek’s first job was accompanying the ballet company in Pilsen, where he met Jana Tvrzska

and they were married in 1959. He is survived by their son, Philip, a poet and website designer

who as a child had piano lessons from the same teacher as his father. After his marriage ended,

his partner for many decades was Jarmila Triskova, who had worked for the recording company

Supraphon.

Sustaining a conducting career was never easy for someone not prepared to toe the authorities’

line. From Pilsen he spent two years transcribing jazz from cassettes on to paper and selling the
scores to bands before becoming an assistant conductor in Teplice, often conducting without a

rehearsal. He also worked in Slovakia, and championed Slovak music later in his career.