Kubelik

How, you might ask yourself, could Béla Bartók's concertos take up three whole discs? After all, he only wrote three piano concertos, two violin concertos, and a viola concerto, and altogether they'd take up pretty much exactly two discs. So how did the artist and repertoire people at EMI manage to fill out three discs here? In a word, they cheated. They've added not only the Concerto for Orchestra, arguably a fair call considering the nature of the work, but the Suite from The Miraculous Mandarin and the Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta, as well.

What remains consistent is Pierre Fournier's elegant and aristocratic playing, his superb control of the bow and his supple, consistently beautiful tone impressed a whole generation of cellists and music lovers all over the world. Sixty-five years since he first recorded for Decca, we are proud to celebrate the artistry of this most distinguished of cellists and the wealth of recordings for Deutsche Grammophon, Decca and Philips – presented here together for the very first time in this 25-CD limited edition set.

This recording presents 16 different cadenzas for this work, written by Ferruccio Busoni, Joseph Joachim, Edmund Singer, Hugo Heermann, Leopold Auer, Eugène Ysaÿe, Franz Ondricek, Franz Kneisel, Henri Marteau, Fritz Kreisler, Donald Francis Tovey, Jan Kubelik, Adolf Busch, Jascha Heifetz, Nathan Milstein, and Ruggiero Ricci. Each cadenza is tracked separately and can be programmed by the listener into the concerto.

This is a superb disc. There have been distinguished collections of Smetana’s symphonic poems (notably a vintage Kubelík disc) but none quite to compare with this in excitement, richness of detail and, in the case of Wallenstein’s Camp, sonic spectacle – how well Smetana writes for the brass! Indeed this, Richard III and especially Hakon Jarl emerge afresh as symphonic poems every bit the equal of those of Liszt. The early Jubel Overture (1848) with its thundering, frantic opening timpani and energetic folksy flavour is a real find. So, too, is the beautiful watery tableau The Fisherman, which has a Wagnerian evocation gently reminding one of the moonlight sequence in Vltava.

James Levine's viennese recording of Smetana's famed masterpiece is one of the best performances of the work around today. With clear, full-bodied digital recording and ripe, rich and opulent playing from the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, it presents a performance that is as comporable to Kubelik as any other. Despite Levine's roots in the theatre (Metropolitan Opera), he manages to grasp a clear sense of drama in the work, and while some might argue that he is mainly concerned with orchestral effect for its own sake, he certainly does not do this but presents every minute detail in this musical kaliedascopic picture.