Photo: Barbora Němcová, Radio Prague International
Karel Janovický a Czech-born composer, pianist and broadcaster, died last week in the United Kingdom at the age of 93. Janovický escaped from communist Czechoslovakia in 1949 and settled in London, where he worked for the BBC and headed the station’s Czechoslovak section in the 1980s.
Karel Janovický, whose real name was Bohuš František Šimsa, left Czechoslovakia in October 1949 with his future wife Sylva, following the Communist takeover in February 1948.
He continued his studies in England, graduating from the Royal College of Music and eventually started working for the BBC. He spoke about it in an interview for Radio Prague in 2008:
“It took a long time for me to get some freelance work for the BBC at the beginning, and then I got into the gramophone department of Radio 3, which was the classical music station – in 1964 in fact – so it was quite late in the day. Before then I earned my living as a freelance musician, composer, teacher.”
See the rest here.
Author: Ruth Fraňková