Vaclav Smetacek

If you take it for granted that Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli was the greatest pianist of the twentieth century and that his performances of Beethoven's "Emperor" Concerto were the greatest of the twentieth century, then you'll probably want to pick up this disc containing Michelangeli's fabled May 29, 1957, performance in Prague with Vaclav Smetacek and the Prague Symphony Orchestra. Although Smetacek is not the deepest, the greatest, or the most sympathetic accompanist Michelangeli ever had, and although the Prague players are not always quite on their best behavior, Michelangeli is as he always is in this work: absolutely definite.

Following the collections of symphonies (Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, Kletzki, SU 4051-2) and violin sonatas (Suk, Panenka, SU 4077-2), Supraphon is now releasing the complete Beethoven concertante pieces. All of them (including the Triple Concerto and the genre-unique Fantasia for Piano, Chorus and Orchestra) came into being within a mere sixteen years, between 1793 and 1809. Although Beethoven deemed the piano "an imperfect instrument", his five piano concertos form one of the cornerstones of his oeuvre and represent a significant landmark in this genre.

Richter's rendition of Grieg concerto is uncompromising and as hard as nature itself, none of the Romantic sentimentality often associated with this piece. One can feel the capacity of the instrument is stretched to the limit in octave passages. No pianists can match Richter's Grieg in its depth, grandeur and etherial beauty of the slow movement. Rubinstein once said, in the Film Richter the Enigma, that piano sounded so different when he heard Richter played, these two concerto recordings are the prime example.

Neither Josef Bohuslav Foerster's Third Symphony of 1894 nor his Fourth Symphony of 1924 could be considered ahead of their time. Indeed, they are barely of their time. His Third has much of heroic middle period Dvorák and Brahms in it while his Fourth, the "Easter Eve" symphony, mixes the weight of late Bruckner with the expressivity of middle period Mahler. But whatever their time, they could and should be considered as vital works in their own right written by a talented, sincere, and distinctive composer.

The Polish pianist Halina Czerny-Stefanska (1922 - 1982) enjoyed a more substantial reputation among piano buffs than among music-lovers in general until she was unexpectedly shot to prominence by a mistake that got her talked about all around the world. In the early 1950s she had performed the First Concerto of Chopin under Vaclav Smetacek in a recording issued by the Czech label Supraphon; when EMI reissued the performance in 1965 it was attributed to Dinu Lipatti, the Romanian pianist whose premature death in 1950 robbed classical music of one of its brightest stars.