MARTIN? The Epic of Gilgamesh • Ji?i B?lohlávek, cond; Marcela Machotková ( A Woman ); Ji?í Zahradni?ek ( Enkidu/Hunter ); Václav Zitek ( Gilgamesh ); Karel Pr?sa ( Narrator/Hunter’s Father/Spirit of Enkidu ); Otakar Brousek ( Speaker ); Prague SO • SUPRAPHON 3918 (59:50 Text and Translation)


Martin?’s major vocal compositions, operas and oratorios, had a way of confounding expectations. The Epic of Gilgamesh , completed in 1955, was in many ways the exact opposite of a work composed around the same time, Mirandolina . While the latter was a typical Goldoni comedy of situation, the former was a work that considered timeless verities of the human condition: the nature of friendship and death. Recitative sufficed for Mirandolina , but Gilgamesh , with its mix of modally based orchestral themes, long-spanned rhythmic ostinatos, and phrases chanted by a bass soloist on a single note, sounds at times like a Martin? transmutation of Eastern Orthodox sacred services. It is a powerful work, deftly drawing upon three sections from the neo-Assyrian redaction of this sprawling and fragmentary religious cycle. From the expansive vision of creation, youth, and energy in the first section, “Gilgamesh,” it turns with restraint to the pathos of “The Death of Enkidu,” then to the alternately forceful and chill ritualistic summons and questioning of Enkidu’s spirit in “Invocation.”


I know of two currently available versions of The Epic of Gilgamesh . Both have been in circulation before. The one that features Zdenek Kosler leading the forces of the Slovak Philharmonic, now on Naxos 8.555138, originally appeared on Marco Polo back in the early 1990s. The one under review is a reissue from 1976. Of the two, Kosler is faster and, I find, a bit less atmospheric than B?lohlávek. There is sometimes a sense of impatience in Kosler’s reading, especially in the “Invocation” movement, as though he found some of the pages less successful than others. I would agree with this, but only if those pages are rushed. Taken in context as B?lohlávek does, the entire oratorio has an overwhelming effect. He is helped by the Prague SO, which is a fresher sounding, better-blended orchestra than the Slovak Philharmonic.


Among the singers, Ji?í Zahradní?ek’s dry, hard-sounding timbre makes him a less attractive Enkidu than Stefan Margita (Kosler). I have a slight preference for Marcela Machotková over Eva Depoltová (Kosler), given the narrow vibrato and refined dynamics of the former. Depoltová sings well, but with less attention to the words. Milan Karpisek (Kosler) offers a more riveting speaker than Otakar Brousek. Elsewhere, the performers are roughly even. Naxos balances its recording well, chorus supporting the orchestra, soloists a bit in front of both. Supraphon’s analog sound is also quite good, with the orchestra richer, and the speaker unfortunately superimposed upon the proceedings in a fashion that recalls voice-overs. Supraphon’s resonance seems to me more appropriate for this piece than that of Naxos, which dulls the musical edge slightly through too large a hall sound.


In short, the choice is yours. Both versions are good, though I’d give the nod to the more thoughtful B?lohlávek.


FANFARE: Barry Brenesal

This new release presents the complete piano trios of Bohuslav Martinu (1890-1959). The piano trios span two decades of Martinu’s life, and his compositional evolution can be seen as the pieces progress. The Smetana Trio, which consists of pianist Jitka Cechova, violinist Jiri Vodicka, and cellist Jan Palenicek, performs these works brilliantly.

Classical Music

Classical Music

This splendid disc was originally released on the Panton label, but happily reappears here on Supraphon. The fact that the conductorless Prague Chamber Orchestra can play this rhythmically tricky music with such confidence bespeaks long familiarity with Martinu's personal idiom. These are, one and all, fabulous pieces, particularly the Toccata e due canzone, a masterwork if ever there was one, and a much darker and more emotionally draining essay than the neo-baroque title might suggest.

Here's the bottom line: these are simply the finest versions of all three works. Tempos are lively, balances true, those long, syncopated, lyrical cantilenas in the first movements of the Tocatta and Sinfonietta soar as if self-propelled. No detail of Martinu's ceaselessly inventive orchestration passes unobserved, and his busy rhythms and obsessive ostinatos never turn mechanical (a potential issue in the Concerto Grosso especially). As usual, the Czech woodwinds (oboes especially) are a joy, and pianist Josef Hála plays delightfully in all three pieces. Excellent sonics offer an ideal combination of warmth and clarity. It doesn't get any better than this.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Live recording from the work’s world premieres on 11 and 12 December 2008.

This is not the first case of a premiere performance of a work by Bohuslav Martinu (1890-1959) decades after his death. On 11 December 2008 the sold-out Rudolfinum in Prague heard for the first time a work which ranks among Martinu’s most significant and which the composer himself highly esteemed. Martinu originally composed the opera Juliette in Czech. However, so as to ensure appropriate publicity for the work, he wanted – already armed with a French libretto – to place extracts from the most relevant scenes on French radio. Yet Three Fragments from the Opera Juliette (The Key to Dreams) was not broadcast on the radio and had to wait some 70 years for its first performance. This was entrusted to the safe hands of that most competent of conductors Sir Charles Mackerras, who has devoted a great part of his life to discovering Czech music and promoting it on world stages. Thanks to Martinu’s dreamily beautiful music and the remarkable engagement of all the interpreters, the conductor’s December leave-taking of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra was transformed into a joint triumph. After experiencing Magdalena Kožená in the role of Juliette, it is hard to imagine another star singer in her place. The Australian tenor Steve Davislim, who performed in the role of Michel, was a splendid partner to Magdalena Kožená in the lyrical and dramatic position. On this CD, Three Fragments is supplemented by the orchestral suite from the same opera, which sensitively treats the music of all three Acts and corresponds with the “dreamy logic” of the original.

REVIEWS

"I don’t think I’ve ever heard a performance of any part of this score that captures its sheer beauty and fantasy so well." -- International Record Review, June 2009

"Mackerras directs a wonderful performance and while Kožená sings the title-role beautifully she is in excellent company. The Czech Philharmonic Orchestra play superbly throughout, not least in the sensible coupling of Zbyn?k Vost?ák’s expert arrangement of three of Julietta’s orchestral episodes. I cannot recommend this scintillating disc highly enough."-- Gramophone, June 2009

"Magdalena Kožená is magnificent as the volatile Julietta and is excellently matched by Steve Davislim’s Michel. Davislim is also terrific in the opera’s almost unbearably poignant finale. Along with three orchestral excerpts, including the opera’s prelude, these fragments provide a fitting tribute to Mackerras’s profound understanding of Martin?’s musical character." -- BBC Music Magazine, June 2009

"The sure hand of Charles Mackerras, a master of exceptionally high calling, succeeds in drawing out all the wealth of the score, letting the music shine with its most beautiful colors as he wields a world-class ensemble, the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra. The bright, at times seemingly transparent mezzosoprano of Magdalena Kožená proves to be ideal for the role of Julietta, a girl losing her memory, a being from another world, sensuous and yet ungraspable. Davislim proves to be an ideal partner for her."-- Das Opernglas, June 2009

"Sir Charles Mackerras can scarcely be equalled for the way he lives this music, for the way it breathes and blooms under his direction. Thanks to the crystal-clear luminosity of the Czech Philharmonic’s finely detailed sound and the extraordinarily sensitive performances of world-class singers Magdalena Kožená and Steve Davislim, Mackerras has succeeded in fully revealing the suggestive quality of the music, carrying listeners away to a world of dreamlike surrealism. In the hands of Mackerras, a Martin? expert, the score becomes a magical tome." -- Fono Forum, July 2009

“I have realised that, notwithstanding the immense progress we have attained … the questions I have come across in the literature of a nation we refer to as primitive still accompany us. They are the questions of friendship, love and death. In the epic of Gilgamesh, we encounter a very acute and almost anxiously distressful yearning to find the answers, which we have been seeking in vain to the present day.” The music Martinu created during the last decade of his life demonstrates his penchant for religious and spiritual texts. The idea of setting the epic written 4,500 years ago matured in the composer for 15 years. Although differing boldly from the avant-garde of the 1950s, it is an utterly modern piece, reflecting Martinu’s intense interest in Baroque music and the Notre Dame school. The oratorio, premiered on 23 January 1958 in Basel, was a tremendous success. Its performance in Prague in January 2017 by the Czech Philharmonic and a superb international team of soloists, conducted by Manfred Honeck, brought back to life the work’s English version, based on Reginald Campbell Thompson’s translation. The recording, featuring a unique constellation of performers, renders the spiritually profound aspect of Bohuslav Martinu’s work with an exceptional emotionality.

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Martinu composed Ariane in a record time of one month, in the summer of 1958. The Greek myth of Ariadne, the daughter of Minos, King of Crete, who helps Theseus slay the minotaur, has been set to music by a number of renowned composers. Martinu based his libretto off Georges Neveux's drama Le Voyage de Thesee. Alongside the opera, this release features the Double Concerto, a work representing the apex of the composer's French period and written amidst dramatic circumstances at the time throughout Europe.

Includes work(s) by various composers.

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Ludmila Dvorakova enjoyed global fame as a slim, blonde soprano with a magnificent stage presence and possessing a voice of a distinct timbre, capable of both softness and drama, smoothly negotiating the high registers and with a dark middle register, always accurate and breathtaking. She excelled in the most demanding dramatic soprano roles and, following in the footsteps of Ema Destinnova, Maria Jeritza and Jarmila Novotna, was the first modern-era Czech singer to appear at the world's major opera houses, including the MET in New York. Ludmila Dvorakova started her career in Ostrava and soon caught the attention of Prague, where the National Theatre engaged her in 1954. In the following year, she was afforded the opportunity to work for the Staatsoper in Vienna, and in 1960 for the Staatsoper in Berlin. When Wieland Wagner heard her singing Ortrude in Munich, he invited her to the Bayreuth festival. Her debut appearance, in 1965, was followed by six years of collaboration and a degree of fame that no Czech artist had previously attained in Bayreuth. In 1966, she was offered contracts with the MET and Covent Garden. This recital, featuring recordings released on CD for the very first time, is compiled from Dvorakova's rare studio recordings made for Supraphon and Czechoslovak Radio. The venerable soprano's imminent 90th birthday represents a perfect opportunity to recall a voice that garnered enthusiastic applause at major opera houses worldwide. Ludmila Dvorakova - a breathtaking voice that dazzled audiences at the most prestigious opera houses worldwide.

To mark Libor Pešek’s eightieth birthday, Supraphon presents a representative selection of large orchestral recordings he made from 1981 to 1989. Compositions by Josef Suk, who has occupied a privileged position in Pešek’s career, are featured alongside paramount Impressionist pieces – Debussy’s La mer and Ravel’s Suites from the ballet Daphnis et Chloé. Pešek’s recording of Bruckner’s Symphony No. 7 and Suk’s lesser-known suite Under the Apple Tree are being released on CD for the very first time. The album also includes recordings of two concertos – Elgar’s Cello Concerto, with Michaela Fuka?ová, and Scriabin’s Piano Concerto, with Garrick Ohlsson. Within the illustrious career of Libor Pešek, a great and groundbreaking figure among Czech conductors, the period documented on this CD represents one of his peaks, the time of his most intensive collaboration with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, preceding his assuming the post of music director of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic.

These digitally remastered recordings bear witness to Pešek’s remarkably nuanced work with the orchestral sound and sense for the great lines of Romantic orchestral scores.

JANÁ?EK The Excursions of Mr. Brou?ek • Václav Neumann, cond; Bohumír Vich ( Mat?ej Brou?ek ); Ivo Žídek ( Mazal/Blankytný/Pet?ík ); P?emysl Ko?í ( Sacristan/Lunobor/Dom?ík ); Libu?e Domanínská ( Málinka/Etherea/Kunka ); Karel Berman ( Würfl/?aroskvoucí/Councillor ); Helena Tattermuschová ( Young Waiter/Child Prodigy/Student ); Prague Natl Th O/Ch • SUPRAPHON 3985-2, mono (2 CDs: 116:14)


James North wrote a review of a live performance of The Excursions of Mr. Brou?ek led by Ji?í B?lohlávek in Fanfare 32:3. While I agree with his high regard for the work, and the substance of his observations regarding the quality of available recordings, I take issue with calling The Excursions a “charming romantic comedy.” Romantic comedy exists in this score for a pair of subsidiary characters over the first roughly 10–12 minutes of the work, between the acts and at the work’s conclusion for a minute each, outside a very noisy tavern that serves (and brings on stage) sausages. In other words, love and food—ideals and necessity providing a grounding frame to the lengthy content of the opera, the pair of drunken dreams of Mazal’s landlord, Mat?j Brou?ek. Traveling to the moon, he supplies a send-up of the petit-bourgeois’ understanding of art: Its inhabitants live on dew, and fall into ecstasies while reading aloud their own nonsensical works. Brou?ek’s second dream takes him back to 15th-century Prague and the Hussite Rebellion, where his modern morals come up very short of the courage and sacrifice of the times. If the first part has a Baron Münchausen-feel to it, with our very dull, ordinary hero turning down the affections of a moon maiden and taking a ride back to earth on the back of Pegasus, the latter is realistic, serious, and mordant. If The Excursions fits into any genre, it’s satire, successively light and dark.


Janá?ek does restore good humor at the end, when Brou?ek escapes back to the present after being roused by a fellow toper, whom he assures he thrashed the crusaders with his bare hands—while staggering with help to his bed. But the sharp differences between the tone of the two main acts almost certainly account for the lack of general interest in the opera outside the Czech Republic and Slovakia—and for its lengthy genesis of nine years, involving six different librettists in succession. In the end, The Excursions will likely always remain outside the composer’s charmed circle of internationally performed operas, but it is well worth knowing by anybody who enjoys the composer’s best work.


This version was recorded in 1962. My original LP copy of it is Supraphon 50531/3. It has the full text, with idiomatic translations into English, German, and French. Supraphon’s latest incarnation is in the mode of its current reissue series, supplying just brief plot synopses per three- to five-minute chunks of the opera. That’s pennywise, but korun ?eská foolish. After all, it’s not as though the label has to pay licensing fees to any of the artists who have survived at this late date; and full bilingual texts would help make these analog rereleases, both mono and stereo ones, more competitive.


The recording has some fine things going for it. Top of the list is Václav Neumann, heard in his prime. The drooping tempos and failing momentum of later years are nowhere in sight. Instead, we have a vital reading of The Excursions that emphasizes color and the lyrical line, without neglecting the work’s more passionate pages. I’ve never heard the interlude featuring Brou?ek’s trip on Pegasus rendered with such detail and verve. Strong, too, is Bohumír Vich, perhaps best known for taking the role of Va?ek in An?erl’s 1947 recording of The Bartered Bride (currently available on Opera d’Oro 1354). He manages to convey the pompous, stolid character of Brou?ek without departing from the sung line. Ivo Židek is heard to stronger advantage than when he sang Jeník in The Bartered Bride of 1952 (Supraphon 3980). There his pinched top and uneven production marred an excellent conception of the role and fine enunciation; here, he truly sounds the exuberant youth. Libu?e Domanínská wasn’t quite 40 when The Excursions was made, but there’s little bloom to her voice, and a fluttery tone accompanied by some shrillness at lower dynamic levels. This makes her less effective as the lover Málinka, but her fearless ring when she opens up helps as Etherea and Kunka. P?emysl Ko?i’s slight wobble and lack of resonance detract from a keen appreciation of character in his three parts.


Sound is good for its age, with little constriction, and a reasonable separation between the stereo channels. The strings seem a bit wiry, but that can be compensated for with lower treble. There’s good balance between singers and the orchestra, too. If not a first choice in the field for this opera, it’s definitely recommended for fans of Neumann. They know what he could do at his best, and he does that here.


FANFARE: Barry Brenesal