Otakar Ostrčil

Like his contemporaries, Vítězslav Novák, Josef Suk, and Otakar Zich, Ostrčil composed in a densely orchestrated, thickly contrapuntal style that was heavily influenced by Mahler, Richard Strauss, and the early works of Arnold Schoenberg.

At times, the extreme linearity of his work (as in the orchestral preludes to Legenda z Erinu and the climactic sections of Křížova cesta) goes beyond functional harmony; in these moments he can easily be aligned with the Viennese expressionists, whom he much admired.

At the very end of his career, with his final opera Honzovo království, he turned to an ironic sort of neoclassicism reminiscent of Paul Hindemith or even Dmitri Shostakovich: the work is full of grotesque marches and folk dances that match the socialist politics of the libretto's mock folktale atmosphere.

These programming choices met extreme controversy over Ostrčil's fifteen-year administration at the National Theater, especially from conservative critics such as Antonín Šilhan, who branded the conductor an anti-Czech pro-communist traitor, and whose articles prompted a riot at the third performance of Wozzeck.

It was Ostrčil's belief in the necessity of presenting modern art to the public that won him many supporters among the students of Prague, led by the young pedagogue and microtonal composer Alois Hába; in a climate increasingly unsympathetic to modernist exploration, the conductor was hailed as a hero.