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Antonín Dvořák’s op. 53 is now part of the repertoire for all the world’s great violinists. Josef Suk’s G minor Fantasy For Violin and Orchestra is a kind of virtuoso, rhapsodic symphonic poem. Janáček’s late, concise Violin Concerto, ‘The Wandering of the Soul’, combines great energy and urgency. Josef Špaček, the youthful concertmaster of the Czech Philharmonic, recorded these concerts live with “his” orchestra under its principal conductor Jiří Bělohlávek. The Forbes Magazine in the Czech Republic included Josef Špaček in their 2014 list of most influential “30 under 30” people.

All tracks have been digitally mastered using 24-bit technology.

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Miloslav Kabelac (1908-79), a highly original and individual musical thinker, enjoyed considerable renown during the 1950s and 60s as the leading Czech composer of his generation. However, around 1970 he apparently offended the powers that were, and his many recordings and publications disappeared. Now, after more than two decades of what seemed to be total obliteration, Kabelác's music has, during the past year, made its first appearances on CD, mostly with reissue of broadcast performances from his period of prominence. For comment on those releases, together with further background information, see Fanfare 17:2, pp. 280-81, and 17:3, pp. 214-15. In both those reviews I cited The Mystery of Time as perhaps Kabelác's most distinctive and compelling work, in urgent need of representation on disc. And now its sole previous recording returns to the catalog, bringing to eight the number of works by this composer currently available, although only one is a newly recorded performance.

The Mystery of Time, composed in 1957, is a work of tremendous power and originality. In some ways it is comparable to the Sinfonia Sacra of Andrzej Panufnik, although its aesthetic impact is quite different. But it shares with the Polish work a number of characteristics, among them a ready accessibility, despite the renunciation of most traditional formal and harmonic procedures, and of the sophisticated nuances, embellishments, qualifications, and other devices associated with “expressive“ music. There is little sense of vulnerable humanity in Kabelác's music—of a subjective point of view. Rather, it seems to suggest an impersonal landscape, governed by a supreme order far removed from the judgments or concerns of living creatures. The Mystery of Time represents Kabelác's unusual metaphysical attitude in its most fully and successfully realized manifestation, conjuring the vast expanse of time that stretches from the infinite past to the infinite future, its unwavering forward momentum suggesting the inexorable motion of the heavenly bodies.

The form has been described as a sort of passacaglia, but only in a loose sense: It is not based on contrapuntal development over a recurring bass line, but it does involve a gradual accumulation of energy through the evolving development of simple motivic elements. The work begins with an ominous murmur strongly reminiscent of the opening of Shostakovich's Eleventh Symphony (which dates from the same year), with regard to both mood and actual content. Basic, elemental intervallic material is introduced into a static void, slowly building momentum through a process of imperceptibly altered repetition that must be described as proto-Minimalist. The effect suggests the implacable passage of time viewed from the perspective of a dispassionate eternal consciousness. With great deliberateness the twenty-five-minute work gradually builds in intensity through motivic metamorphosis and interlayered levels of rhythmic acceleration in a grim, inexorable crescendo that eventually culminates in a revelatory cosmic orgasm, before finally returning to the static void.

Karel Ancerl was a close friend of Kabelac and a consistent champion of his music, introducing The Mystery of Time throughout Europe and even in the United States. This recording dates from 1960, and the performance is sympathetically conceived and solidly executed. Of course, a new recording, in modern sonics, would be most welcome, but this reissue provides a valuable opportunity to discover one of the most unforgettable European works of the mid-twentieth century.

Hamlet Improvisation was composed in 1963 and represents a later development in Kabelác's musical language—more terse, angular, dissonant, and gestural—but with much the same underlying metaphysical outlook. The title is enigmatic, as the work has no improvisational elements and its connection with Shakespeare's play or the hero thereof is tenuous at best. The composer's own explanation suggests the obfuscatory philosophical doubletalk that passed for musical commentary in Eastern Europe during the Soviet period. However, the piece, in which angry, dissonant passages alternate with moments of eerie mystery, might have been less misleadingly entitled Contrasts for Orchestra or some such. It make a strong impact as an abstract statement and is another of Kabelác's most important works. This is music of far greater competence and depth than that of other figures from Eastern Europe who have momentarily seized the popular fancy.

With Hamlet Improvisation we have the unlikely case of two currently available recorded performances, each conducted by Ancerl. The other recording (Praga PR 255 000) is taken from a live performance in 1966; this new Supraphon reissue is from a studio recording made the same year and is much better.

- Walter Simmons, Fanfare

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BEDRICH SMETANA: Gabriela Benackova; Peter Dvorsky; Richard Novak; Miroslav Kopp;Marie Vesela; Jindrich Jindrak; Marie Mrazova; Jaroslav Horacek;Jana Jonasova; Alfred Hampl; Prague National Theatre Ballet; Prague National theatre Opera Chorus; Czech Philharmonic/Zdenek Kosle BEDRICH SMETANA: the Bartered Bride, opera in 3 acts.NTSC All Region 4:3; Color; Dolby Digital 5.1; Subtitled in Czech, English, German, French; Approx 137 mins.

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All tracks have been digitally mastered using 24-bit technology.

I consider this recording of Dvorak's cello concerto the best I have ever made. And even though later on I recorded the concerto another seven times, it is the one that means the most to me. Throughout my life I have remained faithful to that which Vaclav Talich taught me.' - Rostropovich Supraphon returns to the most celebrated recording of the most frequently performed cello concerto and it's release, directly mastered in pure analogue, is a very special treat for lovers of the warm, rich vinyl sound. A delicacy for true connoisseurs!

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Ten famous composers are represented on this fantastic 10-CD set, with each disc focusing on some of the best-known music from each conductor. You’ll hear some of the most celebrated compositions from Johann Sebastian Bach, Ludwig van Beethoven, Frederic Chopin, Antonin Dvořák, Leos Janacek, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Bedrich Smetana, Johann Strauss, Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky and Antonio Vivaldi. Selections include the wistful Largo from Dvořák’s New World Symphony, the solemn entrance of the piano in Tchaikovsky’s Concerto in B flat minor, the festive Ode to Joy from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, the sweet bird song and summer storm from Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, and an inexhaustible amount of other musical treasures. This box set is truly a “Best of ” the best—the perfect present for you and your nearest and dearest, who like beautiful music in top quality.

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"The quality of the 10 orchestral pieces assembled on the three-CD Supraphon set of Kalabis reissues has to be heard to be believed, the more so since the music itself is rarely encountered in the concert hall, outside the Czech Republic, at least. But these three discs have more than their fair share of masterworks. If I were coming to Kalabis’s music with innocent ears, it would take only the opening of the Second Symphony of 1959–61 to convince me that I was listening to a major symphonist. The opening Andante moderato generates a sense of powerful foreboding which is released with terrific force in the Allegro molto e drammatico that follows in what one is beginning to recognize as one of Kalabis’s typical manically striding marches. The brooding slow movement, an Andante marked molto quieto (the work was composed at the height of the Cold War) again builds up the tension, dispersed this time in a gloriously long-legged fugue which gradually expands into a gloriously dignified Finale. The First Violin Concerto (1958–59) lies somewhere between Martin? and Shostakovich, perhaps closer to the latter, and is hardly inferior to either, with a bristlingly energetic opening movement, a dark and troubled slow movement (marked angoscioso ) with spiky and assertive central section, and a buoyant but sober Finale. The first disc closes with the 13-minute Symphonic Variations for Large Orchestra (1964). If the Dvorak Symphonic Variations were more often performed, I would recommend resting that score for an occasional hearing of Kalabis’s tightly argued and absolutely unsentimental score—but even the Dvorak rarely gets a look-in these days, so I fear there’s little hope of hearing the Kalabis live, more’s the pity.



The second disc opens with the Concerto for Large Orchestra, commissioned by Karel An?erl for the Czech Philharmonic and composed in 1965–66, which begins with one of Kalabis’s fiercest dissonances, but it’s one of those dense agglomerates which suggests resolution and, sure enough, an arching violin line emerges and purifies the air and, almost before we know it, we’re off on another of Kalabis’s white-knuckle allegro s; Kalabis described the middle movement as a “tragic meditation”; and the freewheeling Finale has something of the ferocious energy of the last movement of Karl Amadeus Hartmann’s Sixth Symphony, though Kalabis pauses for air rather more often. In contrast to the four-movement Second, the Third Symphony is in three movements, another of Kabalis’s galloping allegro s bookended by two uneasy essays, predominantly but not always slow and, as ever, with Kalabis, powered even at moderate tempos by the sense that there’s energy in plenty waiting to be given its head. Volume 2 ends with Kalabis’s Trumpet Concerto of 1973. R?ži?ková, who provides the booklet notes for the set, explains that, exceptionally, Kalabis was allowed to accompany her on a tour of France that year and, in a little town in Provence, he was given a statuette of the town crier, whose adventures the music depicts (hence the title, “Le Tambour de Villevieille”). Cast in two movements and 18 minutes long, it moves as easily as the other works here from knockabout vigor to anxious inaction. The drums that are occasionally heard in the first movement are, briefly, more prominent in the second and sound as if they are about to set up a tattoo but the music then sets off in a different direction. I find this work slightly less personal than the other pieces on offer here, but Kalabis’s craftsmanship is as evident here as elsewhere, and there aren’t so many good trumpet concertos in the world that trumpeters can afford to ignore this one.


Kalabis’s Harpsichord Concerto, composed in 1974–75 (no prizes for guessing who the dedicatee and first performer was), has something of the buoyancy of the Poulenc Concert champêtre and the angularity of neo-Classical Stravinsky—but far more of a sense of onward drive than either composer; indeed, it’s in the driving rhythms of the Finale that Kalabis comes closest to Martin? though, unsettlingly, it then subsides into anguished silence. R?ži?ková complained to her husband, only half-joking, that “You have let me die”; but the times in which it was written, he responded, did not permit another ending. Martin? was tangentially involved in the birth of the work, as R?ži?ková relates in her notes. She was performing the Martin? Concerto in Switzerland and the conductor asked if by chance she had heard of a Czech composer called Viktor Kalabis; much laughter ensued, and a commission soon after that. But don’t expect some maudlin love-letter: Kalabis obviously wanted to show the world what she could do, and the solo part is a demanding one; the piece is almost half-an-hour in length, too, which must make it one of the world’s longer harpsichord concertos. The second work on the third, all-concerto, disc is the Second Violin Concerto of 1977–78, performed by the much-missed Josef Suk, with whom R?ži?ková formed a duo in 1963, so it is good to see him represented here and find him in stellar form. Just over a quarter-hour in length, it’s in a single movement, as are the 22-minute Concerto for Piano and Winds (1985) and the 12-and-a-half-minute Concertino for Bassoon and Winds (1983)—the most explicitly Stravinskian works in this collection. All three are tightly argued, the first two earnest and generally grave in manner, with the Concertino exploiting the capacity of the bassoon to suggest boisterous and slightly preposterous good humor, though there are also a number of passages of almost hieratic starkness.


The performances throughout make the case for the music as convincingly as you could ask. The recordings were made between 1968 and 1991 and have come up well. A few slips from the soloist in the Trumpet Concerto suggested it might be a live recording, a suspicion confirmed by the subsequent applause; a cough and the occasional noise serve the same function in the Bassoon Concertino.


Altogether, this is an excellent survey of some of the major works of one of the major voices of recent times. Taken together with the MSR box (if you do not know the Fourth Symphony, you should not let yourself live in ignorance of it much longer), it should help Kalabis’s name before a Western public, even if it’s largely the small part of it that buys recordings. Bit by bit, one hopes, some of Kalabis’s oeuvre might begin to appear in concert, where audiences will cheer it to the rafters. In the meantime, I urge you to acquire this box and do some hollering at home."


FANFARE: Martin Anderson

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A superb collection of very early Kubelik recordings, including numerous world premieres.

This is an excellent collection honoring Rafael Kubelík. The two jam-packed CDs of live 1940s broadcasts include his central repertoire, works he championed very early on, and indeed multiple world-premiere recordings. Not least is the first-ever recording of Shostakovich’s Ninth Symphony, a live concert dating from December 1946; we also get a live reading of Dvorak’s Piano Concerto with Rudolf Firkusny, from the first-ever Prague Spring festival, and, although the booklet doesn’t identify the premiere recordings, I’d be surprised if any earlier performances of the Martin? Fourth Symphony or Memorial to Lidice, or Dobiás’ Stalingrad Cantata, exist.
 
The collection begins with Dvorak’s Eighth, in quite constricted sound - turn up the volume more than normal - but glittering with the kind of brilliance Kubelík brought to the piece for his entire career. Aside from a prominent trumpet flub in the finale, it’s a highly accomplished live reading by the Czech Philharmonic, revealing they and the conductor were masters of the symphony even in the besieged year of 1944. The piano concerto, in sound which suggests that the orchestra is playing somewhere very far away, nevertheless powers forward with energy and vigor. Firkusny plays the old “revised” piano part, with the absolute command which explains why he has long been associated with this piece. Luckily for us, the recording of his piano is much better than we’d expect from the murky-sounding orchestra. Firkusny’s cadenza is especially fine, although more recent interpreters - Aimard with Harnoncourt, say - are more to my liking in the poetic slow movement with its beautiful opening horn solo.
 
Shostakovich’s Ninth - the first recording of the work - is given a performance unlike any since. The outer movements are remarkably speedy affairs, with some live sloppiness but a lot of spirit and neoclassical sharpness; by contrast the second movement sprawls over ten minutes, the slowest I’ve ever heard it. Compare 10:33 to Vasily Petrenko’s 8:46, Leonard Bernstein’s 8:10, or indeed Rudolf Barshai’s 5:43. The scherzo is rather languid, too. All in all a fascinating account of how different it is from the way the symphony is performed today, and it’s worth overlooking the constant audience noise. What may cause distress is the fact that distortion in the tape results in the entire symphony sounding like it is being performed in E rather than E flat!
 
Bohuslav Martin?’s Fourth, a celebratory masterpiece inflected with joy, energy, and inner peace, receives a great performance here (1948). It’s hard to imagine a more thrilling scherzo than Kubelík’s, whirling forward in a great rush of excitement, but by contrast he really milks the gorgeous romanticism of the slow movement, unafraid to play up the different moods - doubt at the beginning, something very like love after 6:00. Belohlávek’s recent recording on Onyx with the BBC Symphony may be preferable in the finale, where the new account’s freer tempos underscore the triumph of the ending, which Kubelík - maybe intentionally - leaves more ambivalent. The recorded sound is sufficient to give the orchestral piano its place, although you will miss some bass lines and timpani and the incredible colors of the opening pages. Supraphon engineers have, as elsewhere, used technology which removes the hisses and pops but at the expense of a slightly constricted acoustic.
 
The disc is rounded out with Martin?’s Memorial to Lidice - a moving rendition which goes more slowly and tragically than many, although Eschenbach’s reading on Ondine is the most anguished I’ve heard - and a novelty, the Stalingrad Cantata of Václav Dobiás. Written in 1945, the cantata for baritone, male chorus, and orchestra is an eleven-minute paean to the Soviet forces, or at least I’m assuming so, because the sung texts are not provided. The music sounds a bit like a ramshackle Nevsky Cantata, with the same wildness and raw masculine energy but without the tunes or distinction. It counts as a welcome rarity, though, because recordings of Dobiás are otherwise basically non-existent.
 
These are valuable historical broadcasts all around, then, from the world premiere recordings of Shostakovich’s Ninth and probably a few other works too, to the Dvorak concerto from the first Prague Spring festival. Rafael Kubelík’s conducting is consistently superb and insightful; his Martin? is energetic but powerful, his Shostakovich like nobody else. This can all be had in more modern recordings - the Dvo?ák symphony from Mackerras or Kubelík himself, the Martin? from Belohlávek or Thomson - but as a two-disc monument to Kubelík’s superb work with the Czech Philharmonic, this can’t be beaten. For a one-CD tribute to that pairing of great artists, though, we must remember the unforgettable Smetana concert they gave after the end of the Cold War.
 
-- Brian Reinhart , MusicWeb International

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