Classical Music

The recordings that Jean-Pierre Rampal made in Prague in the second half of the 1950s contain some of his most spell-binding performances, questions of mono and stereo notwithstanding. He first visited the city in 1955 where he met Milan Munclinger, himself a flautist, who had recently founded the ensemble Ars Rediviva. Munclinger enabled Rampal to play at that year’s Prague Spring festival, and the following day the flautist and Alfred Hole?ek recorded Prokofiev’s Sonata Op.94. Maybe the pianist’s piano sound is shallower than that given to Robert Veyron-Lacroix when he and Rampal recorded the work in December 1956 for Erato but that hardly effaces Rampal’s superlative articulation and zestful characterisation, much less his sheer virtuosity.

It was also through Munclinger that Rampal was introduced to Jind?ich Feld, whose Concerto Rampal was to record in April 1958 with the Czech Philharmonic and Václav Jirá?ek, though he had broadcast it in 1956 and given its public premiere at the May 1957 Prague Spring Festival. Feld infiltrated a piano, harp and percussion into the accompanying string orchestra and the result is dynamic freshness redolent of a confluence of Prokofiev, Honegger and Martin?. Chamber delicacy ensures the music’s lyricism remains deliciously tart, never simple, and the slow movement is dramatic, even threnodic in places. The finale has contrasts a-plenty and an almost Stravinskian close.

The Baroque was a formidable element in Rampal’s repertoire and these Prague recordings pay eloquent testament to his command of it. He plays František Benda’s Sonata in F with Viktorie Švihlíková whose sympathetic harpsichord accompaniment establishes a fine platform for his delightful warmth. That is no less true in the case of Franz Xaver Richter’s Sonata da camera No.3 with its affecting, dancing artfulness and deeply felt Larghetto. Rampal’s colleague Munclinger accompanies him in the concertos by F.X Richter and Benda – these complement the two composers’ (who were exact contemporaries) chamber music beautifully – and it’s notable how much elegance Munclinger draws from the Prague Chamber Orchestra. Munclinger’s cadenza in the Benda is pretty dazzling the way Rampal dispatches it. Martin Turnovský directs the Rössler-Rosetti Concerto where Rampal’s cadenza seems to half quote from Mozart’s violin concertos. The horns are on especially fine form in this concerto and the Rondo finale is vivacious. Finally, Supraphon recorded the Carl Stamitz Concerto in G major with its abundance of string lyricism in the central slow movement. Here the conductor is Václav Neumann in October 1955, the year before his highly auspicious appearance at the Komische Oper in Berlin.

The production values, photographic reproductions, booklet notes and, above all, transfers are excellent. This twofer catches Rampal at a time of new exploration with a new audience and collaborators, expanded repertoire and a record contract, however brief, with Supraphon. Given that the Richter Concerto and Sonata are making their first CD appearance, Rampal’s admirers should on no account overlook that fact and the other many excellences on offer here.

– MusicWeb International (Jonathan Woolf)

Jan Zach, a new name in this editorial series, ranks among the “Czech music migrants” of the 18th century. However, before leaving war-struck Bohemia in 1741when he was twenty-eight years old, he had already composed a substantial amount of music. The focus of his work lies in liturgical music – solely the text of the requiem mass has been set to music by Zach three times. His Requiem solemne in c minor was one of the most frequently performed requiems on Prague church choirs (a fact witnessed by a great number of surviving copies) and could still be heard as late as the 20th century. Today’s audiences can listen to this mass as a resounding textbook of compositional styles used at the time and admire Zach’s impressive array of style elements ranging from strict counterpoint to modern coloratura arias. His Vesperae de Beata Virgine (introduced here in a modern-time premiere) were also widely used in Prague in Zach’s time. Here we can already trace the first echoes of the style of the Viennese classicist school. Both works give us an idea of music that sounded in newly built Prague churches in the 1730s. Members of the internationally renowned ensemble Musica Florea have accomplished this premiere with their characteristic lively engagement.

Classical Music

Includes work(s) for piano by Leos Janácek. Soloist: Josef Palinicek.

Janácek's most popular orchestral work, Sinfonietta, comes vividly to life in the hands of František Jílek and the Brno Philharmonic, who ideally capture the pagan splendor of the raucous brass fanfares in the outer movements while projecting the magical combination of mystery and playfulness in the remainder. There's a limpid, impulsive quality to the playing that perfectly suits the composer's somewhat frenetic style, and you could argue that this quality lends a certain authenticity to the performances. The woodwinds play with lively energy and tart tone, while the strings are lean and limber.


These orchestral attributes effectively serve the remaining works as well. The Danube Symphony is a beautiful, phantasmagoric work that recreates the world of Janácek's late operas (with affecting vocal contributions from soprano Karolina Dvorakova), while the tender Violin Concerto requires the soloist to be just as adept at meditative musing as virtuoso display (a requirement that Ivan Zenaty fills handsomely). Finally, the incidental music to Schluck und Jau ends the program in Janácek's singular dramatic style. Supraphon's recording presents the performances in naturally spacious, vibrant sound. An excellent addition to anyone's Janácek collection.
--Victor Carr Jr, ClassicsToday.com

How to follow an Award-winner? Why, produce a disc that is just as great

To describe a CD as musically important is to court a certain level of controversy (there are always other causes lobbying on the sidelines) but I’ll stick my neck out and claim extreme importance for this particular release. Its Gramophone Award-winning predecessor coupled the second string quartets of Haas and Janácek, superbly played and including optional percussion in Haas’s finale (11/06). Haas’s Second (subtitled From the Monkey Mountains) is an amazing piece, but I’m tempted to call the Third a masterpiece. It is both more concise and more tautly argued than the Second, less a journey into fantastical realms than an urgent, astringent drama, rhythmically driven (the dissonant opening gestures tear jaggedly across a constant pulse) and intensely heartfelt: the weeping cello at 3'56" into the first movement humbles its colleagues into tearful submission. And no wonder, given that the Quartet was composed in 1938 when Haas and his family were already marked for tragedy as part of a racially mixed community where an active Nazi faction was ready to pounce. Haas was destined for Auschwitz (where he was killed in 1944) and although it would be fanciful to read prophecy into the pages of this marvellous and varied work, the candour and emotional unrest that it expresses have inevitable associations. The longest movement is the last, a theme with variations which closes with a brief but pungent fugue and at times seems prophetic of Prokofiev’s folk-derived Second Quartet of 1941.

The First Quartet (1921) plays for a continuous, action-packed 14 minutes and so impressed Haas’s mentor Janácek that he had it performed. Although less striking than the Third, the First inhabits a similar climate, where temperature and colour shift with a degree of rapidity that suggests Janácek’s influence, though Haas’s musical language has a softer edge. In the hands of the Pavel Haas Quartet Janácek’s own powerfully emotive First Quartet positively glows; one cannot but help ponder what Haas himself might have achieved had he too lived to compose at the “ripe old” age of 69! The Haas Quartet negotiate Janácek’s fervid narrative without over-playing the drama, and they obviously relish its novel and occasionally abrasive sound world. It’s a very useful coupling, not only musically appropriate but evidence that the Pavel Haas Quartet can cut the mustard as successfully in standard repertoire as in the Haas rarities. This is a superb release that deserves not merely to bask in the reflected glory of its predecessor, but to share in it. The sound is first-rate.

-- Rob Cowan, Gramophone [4/2008]

In the wake of the highly acclaimed recording of Janácek’s symphonic works (Sinfonietta, Taras Bulba, etc., SU 4131; Orchestral Choice, Gramophone, August 2013), Tomáš Netopil and the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra have focused on the composer’s vocal- instrumental pieces. The Glagolitic Mass is a generally known work, yet not in the composer’s original “September 1927” version, as it was performed at the premiere in Brno, which has been recorded for the very first time for this CD. It is fascinating to observe how many distinct traits of Janácek’s expressive musical language have vanished from the work as a result of its later modifications. The Eternal Gospel, on the other hand, is a piece virtually unknown worldwide (the only previous Supraphon recording was made almost fifty years ago).

Janácek was inspired by, and created the libretto on the basis of, Jaroslav Vrchlický’s poem about the medieval monk Joachim de Fiore, to whom an angel appeared, bringing tidings of the arrival of a realm of love. Janácek worked on the piece concurrently with the opera The Excursion of Mr. Broucek to the Moon and completed it in the spring of 1914, a few months prior to the outbreak of World War I. Netopil’s new recording may facilitate bringing the remarkable work back to concert stages.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Over two evenings in 1983 (February 4th and November 7th) in the concert hall of Conservatoire Royal de Bruxelles, the world-famous pianist Ivan Moravec spellbound the audience with his majestic performance. This master of the piano’s precision marries cultivated tone and widely differentiated articulation, augmented by deep musical élan. Each tone has absolute logic within the order of the composition he interprets, be it Beethoven’s expansive Sonata in D major, “Pastoral”, or the seemingly smaller pieces by Brahms and Chopin. And it is precisely in the latter that Ivan Moravec excels as a master of tiny area, which he wondrously chases in stylistic terms and renders ebulliently. The live recording breathes in the airy atmosphere of the concert hall, one that can hardly be evoked in studio albums. The recording clearly shows that the world of Beethoven’s, Chopin’s and Brahms’s piano works is close to the essence of Moravec’s being.