Czech music before
and after the French Revolution is a
story of 18th century exodus and 19th
century return; of classical supremacy
and national rebirth; of old guard conservatives
resisting new blood radicals; of the
many who took refuge in other, more
economically rewarding pastures (Vienna,
Paris, Berlin, London); of the few who,
in trying to bridge the divide, never
left; of the ongoing conflict and tension
between the language and culture of
the ruling Hapsburg aristocracy (German)
and the vernacular and custom of the
people (Czech).
Fired by the European
insurrections of 1830 and 1848/49, Czech
romantic nationalism was about the rhythm,
colour and sound of Czech life, Czech
history, Czech speech, Czech landscape,
Czech feeling. Vorisek and Skroup pointed
the way.
Smetana staked the road. Dvořák
illuminated it. Janáček and Suk
trumped its glory.
Six self-contained
but musically-linked symphonic poems,
Má Vlast (My Country),
dedicated to the city of Prague, epitomises
the ultimate patriotic epic. ‘No comparable
work [exists] in European music’ (Harnoncourt).
I Vyšehrad –
‘the half-legendary rock towering above
the Vltava, awakening in the poet’s
mind dreams of its glory and final fall
as the original seat of Bohemia’s rulers
and kings, the harp of the bard Lumir
echoing within the halls of the castle’
II Vltava –
‘the source and course’ of Bohemia’s
most famous river, from stream to St
John Rapids to waterway, fading ‘from
the poet’s sight in the greater flood
of the Elbe’. Forest hunt, village wedding,
nymphs bathing in moonlight, rapids,
Vyšehrad, Prague.
III Šarka –
‘the old legend of Šarka the
Amazonian burning for revenge upon the
whole race of men. She bids her fellow
warrior maidens to bind her to a tree
so that in her apparent distress she
may awake the pity of, and so ambush,
the approaching Knight of Ctirad. He
and his followers indulge in a reckless
drinking-bout, as the mead-goblet goes
around, until one and all sink to the
ground in deep sleep. Thereupon the
warrior maidens, summoned by Šarka’s
horn-call, set about their work of blood
and slaughter.’
IV From Bohemia’s
Woods and Fields – ‘the beauties
of the Czech countryside, the poetry
of its woods and fertile valleys, filled
with the songs and simple joys of the
peasantry. A light breeze rustles through
the grove. From afar come the strains
of country revelry, until all the plain
rings with dance and song.’
V Tábor
– Mount Tábor, southern Bohemia,
‘place of the Transfiguration of Christ’;
the Hussite Wars of the 15th
century. ‘From their stronghold the
Czech Protestants, persuaded by the
truth of their beliefs, drive back their
enemies. The Hussite battle-hymn Are
ye not the Warriors of God? symbolises
the uncompromising resistance with which
the Hussites defended their right to
the truth as they conceived it. The
period of Bohemia’s power and greatness.’
VI Blanik –
‘the Hussite heroes (alternatively an
army of knights led by St Wenceslas,
Duke of Bohemia, 10th century)
sleep within Mount Blanik, waiting for
the time when their land will need them
again. The Hussite chorale from Tábor
joins at the end with the opening
theme of Vyšehrad - the final
apotheosis of a resurrected people and
their future happiness and glory’.*
(* Précis descriptions
adapted and combined from Vilém
Zemanek (1914) and František Bartoš
(1951)).
Performance times for
the complete cycle range from Talich’s
brisk but imposing 73 minutes (1941)
to Harnoncourt’s extreme 84 minutes
(2001). Most, however, come home naturally
at around the 75 minute mark (Ančerl,
1963). At 79 minutes Doráti’s 1956 mono
version, now released for the first
time on CD, compares loosely with Talich’s
original 1929 HMV Czech Philharmonic
recording. Depending on which
transfer of 78s you listen to – my reference
is Ward Marston’s Koch International
Classics Legacy edition, 3-7032-2 H1,
this is five minutes slower than Talich’s
1954 Supraphon re-make on Supraphon
11 1896-2. Kubelík’s emotional
return to the post-‘velvet revolution’
Prague Spring of May 1990 times at 78
minutes. Overall timings, though, tell
but a superficial part of the story.
More critical are the internal differences,
phrasing, rubato, orchestral balancing,
orchestral sound - different traditions
producing different blends and emphases
- and characterisation. As historic
performances go, my preferred Má
Vlast readings remain Talich (1929,
1954), Ančerl
(1963, Supraphon 3661), and Kubelík
(1990, Supraphon 111208). There is nothing
to beat their distinctively blended
Czech sound with their warm strings,
strident, rasping brass, mellow flutes,
rustic woodwind reeds, ruminatively
folk-like in solos, nasally present
in tuttis. They also offer attacking
rhythms poised on the edge, vocal lines
finely graded, playful yet deliberated
dance steps, voluptuous climaxes, and
expressive rubati. Talich’s 1929
string portamenti bring added
period intensity, melodies swooping
Mahler-like to their apexes. All, too,
are pre-occupied with the dramatic firing
of Smetana’s intentions, with integrating
episodes within larger-term structures.
There is nothing remotely trivial or
picture post-card-suggestive about these
accounts.
In neither Doráti’s
mono nor (1986) stereo overviews, both
with the Concertgebouw, do I find anything
indispensable. Listening to his 1956
recording, I want more affection and
suppleness, more passion than passage.
His insistent, unsmiling way with rhythm,
and his inclination to isolate rather
than blend the internal sections of
each poem - through sign-posted rits
and over-long pauses, for instance -
creates ultimately an un-subtle characterisation.
And while the theatre can be highly
charged, it draws essentially on the
hard Slavic imagery and drive of the
Liszt or Tchaikovsky tone-poems rather
than Bohemian pliancy. Smetana’s Hussite
knights turned into Cossack horsemen,
his flirtatious polkas into whip-lashed
Russian dances, the bronzed cupolas
of Vyšehrad and Tábor
into Kremlin domes.
The appended table
compares the timings per poem of (chronologically)
Talich, Doráti and Ančerl.† More
noteworthy than the obvious – that in
I, II and VI Doráti is faster than Talich,
in III-V slower; that, like Ančerl,
he creates a tension curve of progressive
quickening (I-III), then broadening
(IV-VI) - is the relationship
between Tábor and Blanik.
Talich sees the former, nearly three
minutes quicker, almost as an upbeat
to the apotheosis of the latter. Relatively,
Ančerl
- followed by Kubelík
- also thinks of it in this way, albeit
less extremely and favours the timing
balance advocated in the published Czech
edition. Doráti takes a different
approach. Slowing down Tábor
(by over 13%), fractionally speeding
up Blanik, he in effect creates
a pair of closing edifices weighted
similarly. With stops pulled out for
both - edging towards bombast - over-insistence
on their common D minor polarity, and
little attempt to variegate the shared
compositionally/interpretatively awkward
finish and start of one into the other,
the result is an aurally-fatiguing anti-climax.
I Vyšehrad E flat major |
1929 |
Talich |
15:36 |
|
|
1956 |
Doráti |
14:10 |
+9.2%
|
|
1963 |
Ančerl |
14:14 |
+8.8%
|
II Vltava E minor-major |
1929 |
Talich |
12:17 |
|
|
1956 |
Doráti |
11:48 |
+3.9%
|
|
1963 |
Ančerl |
12:28 |
-1.5%
|
III Šarka A minor |
1929 |
Talich |
10:33 |
|
|
1956 |
Doráti |
10:52 |
-3%
|
|
1963 |
Ančerl |
09:48 |
+7.1%
|
IV From Bohemia’s Woods and Fields
G minor-major |
1929 |
Talich |
12:46 |
|
|
1956 |
Doráti |
12:52 |
-0.8%
|
|
1963 |
Ančerl |
12:13 |
+4.3%
|
V Tábor D minor |
1929 |
Talich |
12:19 |
|
|
1956 |
Doráti |
13:58 |
-13.4%
|
|
1963 |
Ančerl |
12:16 |
+0.4%
|
VI Blanik D minor-major |
1929 |
Talich |
15:02 |
|
|
1956 |
Doráti |
14:48 |
+1.6%
|
|
1963 |
Ančerl |
13:41 |
+9%
|
(† Timings indexed
according to performance not inlay-card
duration (the latter accurate only in
the case of Ančerl).
Discipline and orchestral
detail always featured high in Doráti’s
priorities, witness his early stereo
Mercury recordings; for example the
LSO Liszt and Enesco Rhapsodies (Living
Presence 000450036). Here, however,
he’s not so authoritative, maybe because,
unlike the Czech Phil, the Concertgebouw,
right from the harp(s) at the onset
of Vyšehrad, don’t seem that
confident of the notes. Chording is
not always exact, and things like the
rapid fugal string passages of From
Bohemia’s Woods and Fields lack
precision of ensemble and pointing of
entries. In Vltava, the syncopated
(accented) flutes of the Peasant Wedding
(bars 153ff), so understated yet magically,
hypnotically, present in the Ančerl
recording, so nostalgically placed by
Talich, simply disappear, the music
itself transformed into something of
a clog-dance. Later the St John
Rapids section is curiously reined back
- nature tamed by man. The inherent
beauty of the cycle, music of Smetana’s
years of deafness, never disappears,
of course – but only rarely is it enhanced
by anything Doráti does: for
instance the upfront trumpet prominence
in the mix at 1:25 of Vyšehrad.
Physically exciting as some of the tuttis
must have been in the Concertgebouw
acoustic of the time, the bottom line
is that this is an indifferently-recorded
performance which will probably only
be sought after by Doráti collectors,
or as an also-ran in comparative surveys
of Má Vlast. Mono Talich
is much more involving, terrifying and
terrific even. Stereo Ančerl
is more of an eloquently moulded benchmark.
The lack of grandeur in Vltava,
the gabbled clarinet doloroso quasi
recitando of Šarka, the ordinariness
of the string-droned woodwind conversation
comprising the haunting F major Più
Allegro ma non molto in Blanik,
typify a catalogue of shortcomings
I could happily do without.
The CD re-mastering
does little to de-constrict the sound,
with generally dulled upper frequencies
and a congested bass end. Tape drop-outs
mar Vyšehrad (3:20), From
Bohemia’s Woods and Fields (10:42),
Tábor (8:17), and Blanik
(0:02).
Ateş
Orga
Concertgebouw Orchestra/Antal Doráti
