Dvorak Järvi

In the 1980's, conductor Neeme Jarvi recorded the nine Dvorak symphonies with the Scottish National Symphony for Chandos. Most of the recordings have received favorable reviews, and some critics believe the cycle established Jarvi the interpreter of Dvorak's music. While I do not own all the recordings in the series and for that reason cannot compare it to other Dvorak recordings by Jarvi, I can say it is an excellent recording and one of my favorites in my collection (consisting of nearly 800 recordings). It begins with the tone poem "The Noon Witch." It is a musical telling of a story similar to "Hansel and Gretel" and Dvorak cleverly uses different instruments and themes to tell the story.

The first of Dvorak's nine symphonies and the last of his symphonic poems come here in a generous coupling, both of them among the longest works he ever wrote in each genre. The only rival version of the symphony on CD is the Kubelik, and that only comes in the six-disc DG set of the complete cycle. As for The Hero's Song, this is a real rarity. It is in fact the very last orchestral work that Dvorak wrote, in 1897 some seven years before his death. Unlike earlier symphonic poems, it has no specific programme, though the journey from darkness to light in the unspecified hero's life is clearly enough established.

Pairing the Dvořák Cello Concerto with the Victor Herbert Second Cello Concerto is not a new idea (Yo-Yo Ma has the same coupling), but it is a good one. A friend of Dvořák known primarily as a composer of operettas (42 altogether, the best known of which is Babes in Toyland), Herbert wrote for several genres, including film music as early as 1916. His Second Cello Concerto inspired Dvorak to try his hand at a similar work, and the orchestration of the Herbert, which includes three trombones, gave him some ideas on scoring. Gautier Capucon and Paavo Järvi give the Herbert a well-paced reading, spirited in its outer movements and deeply heartfelt in its central andante. It is the kind of performance that can make a listener wonder why this piece has been relatively neglected. However, the Dvořák will be the main reason for many people to get this disc…

This album by violinist Christian Tetzlaff and cellist Tanja Tetzlaff together with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin conducted by Paavo Järvi, is dedicated in the memory of their longtime artistic partner, pianist Lars Vogt (1970–2022). At the heart of this album is Brahms, one of Lars Vogt’s favourite composers, and his late orchestral masterpiece, the Double Concerto. Brahms himself had admired one of Viotti’s violin concertos so much that he included material from the Violin Concerto no.22 into his work. With Christian Tetzlaff’s recording of the Violin Concerto, this album finally brings these two works together. Also included is Dvořák’s beautiful Silent Woods for cello and orchestra, a work by another composer that was very close to Lars Vogt’s heart.

Dvořák’s Stabat Mater was a work brought about by personal tragedy of almost incomprehensible proportions, after the composer lost all three of his then living children. A setting of the mediaeval Latin prayer to the bereaved mother of the crucified Christ, it was to become both a work of mourning and a work of healing. The shifts of mood from grief and near despair to hope and faith run throughout the work, before the glory and solace of the final Amen. Neeme Järvi conducts the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir in this live concert recording.

This disc, made in 1987, is one of the many outstanding discs made by Jarvi and his Scottish orchestra during a very productive and noticeably vibrant point in Jarvi's recording career. Jarvi turned this orchestra from a fairly moderate ensemble into a far finer group with increased tonal resources and power and with a 'live' sounding recorded sound that was special then and remains special today. There were many successes but three cycles stand out - the Prokofiev symphonies, the Rimsky Korsakov Suites and the Dvorak symphonies.

Dvorák's Stabat Mater, Op. 58, was finished in 1880, wrenched out over several years after the death of the composer's daughter. It is a sizable setting that has been largely overlooked in favor of Dvorák's later works, but increasing interest in Romantic-era choral music has brought new performances. It has few specifically Czech elements, gaining its interest partly from its combination of a rather formal quality with strong personal feeling. This reading, conducted by Estonia's Neeme Järvi, is hard to beat. Start with the live engineering from the London Philharmonic Orchestra's new Royal Festival Hall, getting clarity from very large forces.

Jarvi directs a characteristically warm and urgent performance of this exuberant inspiration of the 24-year-old composer. It is by far the longest symphony that Dvorak ever wrote, and was longer still in its original form, before the composer revised it. As Ray Minshull put it, when commenting on the Kertesz/LSO issue, which he had produced for Decca, Dvorak ''later learnt to be jubilant more concisely''. The jubilation is what matters, and there is plenty of that on this record yet the issue brings my first significant disappointment in Jarvi's Dvorak series.

This disc, particularly well recorded in 1986, brings one of the best versions of the symphony coupled with an equally fine delivery of one of the finest for the late symphonic poems. Symphonic is the key word here as this symphony is the most non-nationalist symphony in the Dvorak canon and is without much doubt the most purely symphonic creation as well as being the most tautly argued and dramatic of the nine symphonies. Jarvi's style of conducting these symphonies is to take a straight view and play them very much as Dvorak wrote them. There are therefore no undue changes of tempi, either slowing down to underline climaxes or speeding up to create artificial excitement.