Czech Composers post Martinu

[Brian]

Bumping this thread that represents a fun collection of overlooked composers!

I just pulled out the Ancerl Gold album for Jan Hanus and listened to the suite from "Salt Is Better Than Gold." It is very very filmic - has much in common with the Hollywood scores of the late 1940s, including the big swelling themes, characteristic dances, and gently heroic tonal basis. It's very enjoyable but I do think I'd like it more set to a movie than in a concert hall setting. Ballet was premiered in 1952. This week I'll revisit the Symphony No 2 on the disc, which was apparently written in admiration of and praise for St Francis of Assisi - a subject he managed to depict in such glowing tones that the censors mistook the piece for Socialist realism!

[Brian]

The Ancerl Gold Edition ended with a 4CD set of Czech music from 1950-1961, plus Britten's Young Person's Guide. I've listened to all the music before, but hadn't set down notes on them. Might be handy for others, too.

CD1 is easy listening (in the good sense). It starts with the Britten Guide - unfortunately with narrator, while I much prefer to hear the music without, though opera singer Eric Shilling has very classy old-fashioned elite diction. The rest of the CD is music by Ilja Hurnik. His Four Seasons is a chamber work for either 11 or 18 musicians (the booklet note says both, confusingly), in shifting configurations. It's wonderful music in the manner of certain neoclassical Stravinsky ballets. His ballet suite from Ondras isn't Stravinskian but rather boldly, brassily Czech, with a certain filmic color that is extra delicious. There is also a lovely Hurnik oboe concerto in the Josef Vlach 4CD box set.

CD2 is unfortunately a writeoff. Two Soviet propaganda works by Vaclav Dobias and Jan Kapr are musically worthless; the Dobias is imitative of Smetana and dominated by a polka tune, while the Kapr is more like Novak, I suppose. The best part of either piece is the three-minute orchestral introduction to the Dobias, before the slogans begin. Julius Kalas' tone poem The Nightingale and the Rose is a 16 minute meander with very extensive flute solos.

CD3 features concertos in three very different styles. Viktor Kalabis uses 12-tone technique at times in his Violin Concerto No. 1, Jan Seidel is inspired by rural folk melodies for his Oboe Concerto, and Ivan Jirko aims for a clean neoclassicism in his Piano Concerto No. 3. The Kalabis piece starts with a bang, with a cymbal crash and dramatic orchestral declaration, before the violin takes this up as its theme. There is a really clear progression to the concerto, since it starts so dramatically and boldly, and the violin gradually calms down the orchestra until the slow movement, where the violin sings a long melody over a nervous, strange accompaniment. The finale brings back the drama; you could imagine a chase scene. Kalabis skillfully alternates a smaller texture for the violin to converse with vs. full orchestra excitement. Terrific. One of the gems of the box.

Seidel's work is Oboe Concerto No. 2, but it's actually the same material as No. 1, just revised so heavily from start to finish that he decided to give it a new number. This is a decidedly more romantic, also more filmic piece; if you're expecting the folk melodies to be in the manner of Janacek or Bartok, you'll be disappointed. As usual with oboe concertos, there is a pastoral ease and charm that replaces the need for drama or emotional range (e.g. Martinu, Strauss, Vaughan Williams). The central movement is a theme-and-variations on a very memorable, children's nursery-like tune. I suspect I would like this jolly piece better if it was not paired with the Kalabis, since comparison makes it sound trivial. Soloist Josef Shejbal is glorious.

The Jirko piano concerto has definite Martinu influence in its neoclassical toccata busy-ness, and the contrast between the kinetic outer movements and the very slow, moody, melancholy heart of the work. It doesn't sound like a copycat, though. Quite charming.

CD4 starts with Petr Eben's piano concerto, a jittery, jumpy piece with some influences of Martinu and Bartok, and some of the feel of one of those cool gnarly '70s movie soundtracks where postwar modernism reached its peak. The slow movement has a wild passage where the piano fixates on quavers for long stretches of time. The finale relaxes a bit and has some witty passages to contrast with the intense slow movement. Soloist and dedicatee Frantisek Rauch was Eben's piano teacher.

We finish with Symphony No. 2 by Pavel Borkovec, a big 32-minute piece in conventional four movements (scherzo second). The musical language follows the Suk/Novak school rather than Martinu, with a fantasia-like approach to structure and episodes and a fairy tale sound world. It's a little more modern than the Jan Hanus music described above, but it is also perfectly suited to the sound of this orchestra. Not a masterpiece maybe but very entertaining and a joyful showpiece for the orchestra, written for its 60th birthday.

Maybe the most impressive thing about this box is the sheer diversity of styles and voices that were present in 50s-60s Prague. And they didn't even record Jan Novak! (And of course Kabelac is elsewhere in the series.) What an interesting time and what a glorious orchestra.