Smetana

The world-renowned Wiener Philharmoniker, under the masterful direction of Herbert von Karajan, presents a stunning album featuring two beloved works by Czech composers Antonín Dvořák and Bedřich Smetana. Dvořák's iconic "Symphonie No. 9 »Aus Der Neuen Welt = From The New World = Du Nouveau Monde«" showcases the composer's signature blend of Bohemian folk melodies and lush Romantic harmonies. Meanwhile, Smetana's "Moldau" takes listeners on a picturesque journey through the Czech countryside, evoking the beauty and majesty of the famous river. With the perfect combination of virtuosity and emotion, this album is a must-have for any classical music lover.

Like so many upstart ensembles to come out of Eastern Europe, the Skampa Quartet found its beginnings while the members were students – in this case, at the Prague Academy in 1989. Only four short years later, the group gave its debut performance at London's Wigmore Hall and became the hall's artists-in-residence for the following five years. Its captivating energy and rapport with audience is frequently cited among its strengths. Whether this particular performance represents an off night for the quartet, or whether the performance really loses something when not viewed live is anyone's guess, but this live 2006 recording does not live up to its Wigmore Hall accolades.

In the last years of his life, Franck created three chamber music masterpieces: the Violin Sonata, the Piano Quintet, and this String Quartet. Only the Violin Sonata has achieved a full measure of popularity, and this string quartet is virtually unknown, largely because of its ambitious length and difficulty in performance. It's a terrific piece of music employing the composer's trademark cyclical form: the movements share tunes, and the finale acts as a sort of summing up of the entire work. While challenging to the performers, there's nothing difficult about it for the listener, and this performance is just about the only show in town. Fortunately, it's a very good one. –David Hurwitz

Four examples of Bohemian Expressionism: Romantic with the tombeau ‘to the memory of an angel’ that Smetana erected to his daughter Bedřiska, and the two pieces that Suk wrote under the influence of Schumann and Dvořák, his father-in-law; and modern with the premiere of the Trio 1978 by the late Luboš Fišer, tormented composer, too soon forgotten, of the 15 Prints on Dürer’s Apocalypse (1965).

The most complete collection available of music by the father of Czech nationalism in music. Má Vlast, The Bartered Bride and the String Quartet ‘From My Life’: all written within a decade of each other, all so fundamental in their different genres in forming a Czech national identity in music that it can seem incredible they were the work of a single composer.

Smetana holds an important place in the development of musical nationalism in his native Bohemia, where he was born in 1824, the son of a master brewer in the service of Count Waldstein and others. His career was interrupted by a period of self-imposed exile in Sweden after the political disappointments that followed the turmoil of 1848. He was instrumental in the establishment of Czech national opera and a Czech national style, in particular in his symphonic poems. He was deaf in later life but continued to compose, an autobiographical element appearing in his string quartets.

Volume one of this series was an Editor’s Choice in Gramophone and here Gianandrea Noseda conducts his second instalment in his Smetana Orchestral Works series. This latest programme is made up of the familiar Bartered Bride Overture and Dances with the overtures and ballets of his lesser-known operas, including his first opera The Brandenburgers - performed with the Ballet from Act I, The Kiss – which was his first collaboration with the brilliant young librettist and poet, Eliska Krasnohorska, and The Devil’s Wall all of which offer Smetana’s masterful orchestration, panache and virtuosity. They are performed with assurance by the BBC Philharmonic.

Classical in its respect for established forms, romantic in its clearly autobiographical nature, the chamber music by the composer of The Bartered Bride is not plentiful, especially when compared with the output of his younger, immediate successor, Antonfn Dvoiik, who returned to the string quaner form rhroughout his creative life, producing fifteen between 1862 and 1895. Well removed from absolute music - as would be Leoš Janáček's after him -, Smetana's surviving chamber catalogue consists of only four works that make up a rare case of psychological programme music. The Piano Trio(1855) already represented a sort of tombeau for the small daughter he had recently lost to scarlet fever.