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.

Jir� Belohl�vek (1946-2017) was an important worldwide ambassador of Bohuslav Martinu's music. For the Supraphon label alone he recorded nearly forty of Martinu's symphonic compositions, concertos, and stage works, and many of these were world premiere recordings. Despite large-scale plans, this recording also represents both the highpoint and the conclusion of Belohl�vek's noteworthy discography of Martinu's works. The premiere recording of the opera-pastoral What Men Live By was made from three concert performances in December 2014. Martinu composed it to his own libretto in America at the turn of 1951-52, and he had a clear idea concerning it's performance: "It must not be played 'pathetically', but joyfully... The text strongly tempts one to come up with a very serious, 'deep' conception, but that is not what I had in mind. To me, it is a rather joyful work, and what the listener must feel is not some sort of religious moral (lesson), but instead joy. The moral is in fact in the joy." This recording of the Symphony No. 1 was made in January 2016, and it joins the earlier releases of Symphonies Nos. 3-6. It was part of a planned but unfortunately unfinished complete set of Martinu's late orchestral works. Belohl�vek's tenure with the Czech Philharmonic during the last five years of his life was a very happy time for both parties, and it led to the development of new qualities in the orchestra's sound. This recording shall endure as living proof of what was a very special constellation of humanity and artistry.

The Pavel Haas Quartet is yet another exceptional young ensemble from the Czech Republic, and this debut recording is a major statement. They are coached by Milan Škampa, violist of the Smetana Quartet, and their performance of Janácek's "Intimate Letters" reveals their mentor's influence in details such as the quick tempo for the finale. Otherwise this is very much an individual performance of a work that seems able to absorb just about anything interpretively that you might care to throw at it.


In this case, we hear an unusually wide range of tempo contrasts, but also extreme care in making transitions from one section to the next. The frantic outburst in the middle of the second movement offers a particularly telling example, and the collective virtuosity required to phrase with such unanimity is really astonishing. In short, this is yet another first-rate performance of this glorious work, one of the pinnacles of the quartet literature. It also makes the ideal coupling with the Second String Quartet of Pavel Haas.


Haas is best known today for his brief Study for Strings, written in the Terezín concentration camp and first performed under Karel Ancerl and his orchestra of Jewish musicians. A pupil of Janácek, and the one composer often said to most resemble him in style, Haas died at Auschwitz in 1944. The Second Quartet's subtitle, "From the Monkey Mountains", refers to a popular Czech resort area and highlights the music's sources of inspiration: nature, folk music, and many of the same sights and sounds that Janácek evokes in his music (chamber or otherwise).


One unusual feature of this quartet is the inclusion of percussion in the finale ("Wild Night"). It works splendidly, though the piece also can be played without it. The only serious competition for this music comes from the Kocian Quartet on Praga, a disc containing all three Haas quartets, and good though that performance is, this one is even better, if only slightly so. Part of the reason stems from the perfectly balanced ensemble and beautifully smooth string sonority, a specialty of the best Czech quartets from the Smetana to the Panocha, Prazák, and Talich Quartets. This quality allows the players to really dig into the music without ever making an ugly sound (except when the music asks for one).


For example, that nasty explosion just before the end of "Intimate Letters", or the grinding sonorities of "Coach, Coachman, and Horse" in the Haas quartet, really stand out, much more so than in performances where a generalized timbral harshness is mistaken for intensity of expression. Kudos also to percussionist Colin Currie, whose trap-set playing meshes ideally with that of the quartet, neither too prominent nor too reticent, giving the Haas finale all of the color and personality that it needs. Great sonics too. A stupendous release! [10/16/2006]
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

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This is the Smetana Trio playing Dvorák, not to be confused with the Dvorák Trio playing Smetana. Such is life in the world of Czech chamber music. But seriously, Supraphon alone has an abundance of recordings of these works, and no wonder. The F minor and Dumky trios probably are the two finest works in the trio medium from the second half of the 19th century, and they make ideal disc-mates, one a sort of apotheosis of Dvorák's work in traditional forms, the other an innovative and path-breaking essay in his popular nationalist idiom. This stupendous new recording rivals the celebrated Suk Trio interpretations for the same label both in technical mastery and interpretive insight; in short, it is second to none.

The program opens with the Dumky Trio, and right from the start you can tell that this is going to be a great performance. Passion and spontaneity unite with rhythmic precision and a real feeling for the dance. Listen to the natural rubato in the fourth movement that prevents the recurring march rhythms from ever turning stiff or mechanical (and notice how much this music resembles the finale of Shostakovich's Second Trio). I loved the lightness of rhythm in the next piece: so often its skipping 6/8 rhythm becomes an excuse to create a chamber version of Wagner's descent into Nibelheim. Not here, where careful attention to dynamics and a flowing tempo create an effortless feeling of movement. There isn't a second in this performance where you feel the music should be played any other way, and no praise can be higher than that.

If anything, these qualities are even more evident in the great F minor trio. The players fling themselves into the first movement with almost dangerous abandon--but notice how perfectly in tune the opening octaves are, and how perfectly balances are maintained even in the most turbulent episodes in the development section. As in the previous work, the scherzo benefits from the ensemble's rhythmic acuity; but it's the slow movement that's really special here. It's not only beautifully paced and phrased, but the ensemble obviously took as much care with transitions as with the melodies, and the result has a seamless continuity that belies the impression in less-adept performances of a movement consisting of a disjointed stream of incredibly pretty tunes.

In the finale, happily taking Dvorák's "con brio" admonition literally, the ensemble sails into the coda with such enthusiasm that the music seems self-propelled. The final turn to the major in the coda is absolutely thrilling, and the closing bars offer the ultimate in musical satisfaction. I started listening to this disc with the slow movement, thinking to sample a bit here and there, but the playing was so gripping that I played the disc through to the end, then went back and listened again from the beginning. It's that good, and the sonics have a true-to-life immediacy that permits these spellbinding interpretations to register with maximum impact. Without question, this is a very great recording, an essential acquisition whether you already love this music or just want to get to know it better.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

BEDRICH SMEANTA; ANTONIN DVOARK; JOSEF SUK; VITEZSLAV NOVAK; LEOS JANACEK: The Smetana Quartet; The Panocha Quartet; The Skampa Quartet. (3CDs) THE BEST OF CZECH CLASSICS - STRING QUARTETS - BEDIRCH SMETANA: String Quartet No. 1 in E minor 'From My Life'; String Quartet No. 2 in D minor; ANTONIN DVORAK: String Quartet No. 10 in E flat major, Op. 51 'Slovonic'; String Quartet No. 12 in F major, Op. 96'american' ; String Quartet No. 13 in G major, Op. 106; JOSEF SUK: Meditation on an Old Czech Hymn 'St Wenceslas', Op. 35a; VITEZSLAV NOVAK: String Quartet No. 1 inspired by Tolstoy's 'Kreutzer s

When viewed with the distance of time, the album confirms its importance in the repertoire of the two great artists. The famed tone of Josef Suk’s violin is completely in the composer’s service, the instrument talks and sings, while Panenka’s take on Beethoven still astonishes with its wealth of articulation, purity of style and crystal-clear tone.

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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

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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.