MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2024
60,000 reviews
... and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


CD REVIEW

Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger

alternatively Crotchet   AmazonUK   AmazonUS

 

Baroque Bohemia & Beyond Volume 4
Josef MYSLIVEČEK (1737-1781)
Sinfonia III in C major (1763) [9:55]
Jan Adam GALLINA (1724-1773)
Sinfonia in E flat major [13:17]
Jan VENT (1745-1801)
Sinfonia in E flat major [18:20]
Josef MYSLIVEČEK (1737-1781)
Sinfonia VI in D major (1763) [6:13]
Josef BÁRTA (c.1744-1787)
Sinfonia in F minor [14:26]
Josef FIALA (1748-1816)
Sinfonia in F major [9:10]
Czech Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra/Zdenĕk Adam (artistic director),
Vojtĕch Spurný (harpsichord, conductor)
rec. May 2007, Studio Arco Diva Domovina, Prague
ALTO ALC1014 [72:00]
Experience Classicsonline


Jonathan Woolf gave a warm welcome to the three preceding volumes in this series and there is no great reason why one should not treat the fourth volume similarly. And yet, it has to be said, quite a lot of the music here is worthy rather than especially exciting. This is probably best regarded as a disc for those with a particular interest in the field, rather than for the general listener.
 
Josef Mysliveček is the one composer represented twice in this anthology. Born in village near Prague, the son of a successful miller, Mysliveček initially followed in his father’s trade. After the death of his father, however, he passed on his share of the business to his brother and concentrated on making a new career in music, having previously studied the organ, the violin and composition. He went on to study in Venice with Giovanni Pescetti, and made something of a career for himself in Italy; Mozart thought quite well of his work. An excessive fondness for drink – and for other men’s wives (venereal disease cost him his nose) – led to his death in poverty in Rome. The two Sinfonias played here are pleasant, if less colourful than the life story of their composer. They are relatively conventional, each in three movements (allegro-andantino-presto); in both cases the opening allegros are attractively energetic, the central andantinos have a mild charm and the closing prestos are engaging.
 
Mysliveček had connections with the Pachtas, an important family whose estate at Citoliby, some forty miles from Prague, was an important centre of musical patronage. Jan Adam Gallina was, for a time, musical director at Citoliby. He is represented here by a very attractive four-movement Sinfonia. There is consistent inventiveness in the use of orchestral colours, some nice transitional passages and some effective contrasts of tempo and dynamics. In the andante the writing for woodwinds has real poignancy and in the menuetto there is a boisterous (yet dignified) energy that such movements don’t always have. There is some attractive writing for the horns - played by Zdeněk Adam and Romana Mazákova.  It seems that only a small proportion of Galina’s orchestral work survives – a shame if it was all as good as this Sinfonia.
 
Jan Vent, son of a fiddle-playing cobbler, was born near Citoliby. After some musical studies in Prague - he was an oboist of some distinction - he too worked for the Pachtas. He went on to work in Vienna where, amongst other things, he made arrangements of ‘hits’ from Mozart operas for wind band. His Sinfonia in E flat major is also in four movements, pleasant but unremarkable, less striking than Galina’s composition in the same key.
 
Bárta, born in Prague in the mid 1740s, he was working – with some success – in Vienna from the beginning of the 1770s. He wrote a number of operas and singspiels, string quartets and symphonies. The first movement of his Sinfonia in F minor starts with a rather solemn adagio which mutates into a bubbly allegro; the central menuetto dances along engagingly and the closing allegro is music of Haydnesque expressiveness and dynamism. Of another Sinfonia by Bárta which appeared on Volume 1 of this series Jonathan Woolf said that it was “a good example of Sturm und Drang in compressed form”. So is this one – vigorous, intense, quasi-dramatic music. It would be good to hear more of Bárta’s work; a CD or two devoted just to him would, I suspect, be an interesting proposition.
 
The closing work on this CD is by Josef Fiala, who was born some thirty miles south-west of Prague at Lochovice. An oboist (like Vent he studied with Jan Stiastny in Prague) who could double on cello and viola da gamba, Fiala worked for a series of aristocratic masters, including the Elector Maximilian Joseph in Munich. Mozart encountered him and his music there and in a letter to his father described Fiala’s music as “pretty”. That gets it about right – this Sinfonia in F major is graceful and pleasant without ever achieving any real sense of weight or substance or developing any very distinctive characteristics. Pleasant and pretty, worth hearing, but less than memorable.
 
The modern-instrument ensemble of the Czech Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra plays stylishly and with commitment; just once or twice I found myself wondering if some of this music - notably that of Bárta and Gallina - might not have benefited from slightly more sense of drama. But such a quibble shouldn’t be allowed to put off anyone with an interest in the music of this time and place, especially as several of these pieces are here receiving their very first recordings.
 
Glyn Pursglove
 



 


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Chandos recordings
All Chandos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools




Return to Review Index

Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.