This is an example
of genial charm that arrived to enliven
the run-up to Christmas. It’s as well
that Naxos gives us – correctly – the
Burghauser numbers because some of these
generic pieces are examples of his early
work for student balls in Prague. His
aptitude was of course sharpened through
his years of orchestral work and evidence
of his more than competent scoring is
audible throughout. Other works may
well be better known in their guise
as chamber pieces – the Mazurka and
the Rondo or the piano duet Klid. The
beefed-up versions certainly provide
interest though they are almost impossible
to programme in concert these days unless
as encores.
The Mazurka’s charms
survive the orchestral filling-in though
I still think the Rondo works best in
its cello and piano version. Here the
versatile Yablonsky takes the cello
part and indulges some expressive rubati
though he has rather a nasal tone. I
don’t think the pioneering Zelenka-Heřman
recording of the late twenties is around
at the moment – but that’s a must-hear
recording and nobly evocative. In Klid
he strikes a good note in lower lying
passages. The Seven Interludes will
probably be unfamiliar to most; they
were to me. These are ‘prentice
works (the Burghauser number is a very
low B15) and are imbued with quasi-operatic
or operetta-ish lyricism. The fifth,
an Allegro assai, has stout nobility
and a lyrical second theme and is the
pick of the bunch, in which one can
feel the composer trying out texture
even in the most stylised fashion. The
Polonaise fits that kind of genre writing
as well, though the Nocturne strikes
a more interesting balance between the
dictates of form and the resources of
the imagination. Arranged from his Quartet
in E minor [No.4] it’s melodious and
charming and well nuanced here.
The American Suite
– so-called- shows some areas of cross-pollination
with his other works written there.
Full of quiet but uneventful lyricism
the most captivating of the movements
is the Andante, wistful and artfully
shaped by Yablonsky and his players.
They play these essentially undemanding
works with sufficient buoyancy to animate
them but not with too much weight to
submerge their real, if slight, charms.
Jonathan Woolf
see also review
by Colin
Clarke and Patrick
Waller
Dmitry Yablonsky (cello) 
