Once again Jiři Štilec and the Arco Diva team have
delved into some enticing repertoire and produced a disc of
contrast and vitality. The stimulus for this particular release
is the eightieth anniversary of Eben's birth; he died in
2007.
The opening work is Petr Fiala's Trio. Written in 1980 it's
a taut, toned tightly constructed four movement work that begins
with a short-winded and witty Giocoso. In the slow movement
the piano's glissandi - I don't know whether the pianist
of the Puella Trio, Terezie Fialová, is a relation of
the composer (daughter?) but she plays splendidly - are reminiscent
of the cimbalon, and the shimmering, slow-moving string melancholy
imparts its own reflective gloss on proceedings too. The developing
chorale on the piano - something of a Czech speciality - also
contains its saturnine moments. There's a kind of virtuoso
cadenza cum etude for the violin in the third movement and a
slow cello passage to balance it. For the finale Fiala invites
the piano to parade its virtuoso credentials, the strings reliant
on contrapuntal assurance. Slowly the chorale - Fiala is a distinguished
choral director in Brno and it re-appears with vocalised power
- emerges once again and leads to further reminiscence.
Sylvie Bodorová wrote Megiddo in 2001, a work
that owed its genesis to a visit the composer made to Israel
when she was working on her excellent Judas Maccabeus.
She was there to study aspects of ritual singing as well as
particular approaches to melody and melismatic singing. Things
start with a somewhat hieratic determination but the writing
is splendidly refined, advancing by Seurat-like brushstrokes
or more gaunt and sinewy 'pillars'. Throughout the ear
is kept alive by her series of aural devices. Affecting lyricism,
quiet and keening, occupies the slow movement; folkloric hues
are not far away either though they are, it's true, sublimated.
The piano here becomes ever more romantically effusive until
the biting, terse end of the movement. The finale, Armagedon,
is powerfully rhythmic and driving but ends with quiet reminiscence,
as did the Fiala.
Finally we have Eben's 1986 Piano Trio. Eben manages the
tricky business of balancing quite terse material with moments
of reflective withdrawal. So too he delineates exchanges between
the three instruments - in the slow movement in particular -
in a highly sophisticated way; leaps, chordal power, tolling
textures, warm string lines that are effusive but never glutinous.
He also cultivates a post-Mahlerian melos of rapid conjunctions
of mood, one that appeals in a Shostakovich-influenced way,
not least in its occasional severities. For the toccata-like
motion of the finale, its brief folk-like moments, and a kind
of discreetly modified boogie rhythm, no praise can be too high.
I'm glad to see that Karel Janovicky has been enlisted to
carry out the full translations. The booklet also sports some
ritzy pictures of the musicians. The disc is only forty-five
minutes in length but the rewards far outweigh that possible
limitation.
Jonathan Woolf
see also review
by Dominy Clements July RECORDING
OF THE MONTH
Puella Trio: Terezie
Fialová (piano); Lenka Matejáková (violin); Markéta
Vrbková (cello) 
