Ma vlast--My Country.

Bedrich Smetana 

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Ma vlast--My Country

Czech Philharmonic, Vaclav Talich. Production: Jana Gonda, Petr Kadlec, Petr Vit. Text: Eng., Ger., Fr., Cz. Recorded: 6-7/1954, Prague Rudolfinum. Released: 2006. TT: 75:04. ADD mono. 1 CD Supraphon SU 3826-2.

Talich's Ma vlast, a recording of 1954 that has now been digitalised, is above all historical testimony to the musician and his era, to the changing reception of the work, to shifts in its emotional place in national culture, and to the increasing quality of orchestral performance. Despite the admirable way in which the recording has been cleaned, in the rather tinny monophonic sound one can clearly hear and recognise the limits of the recording technology, and despite the legends with which the Czech Philharmonic is wreathed, when listening to the "fat" brass tones, the very thin tone of the oboe or the over-prominent strings one cannot but reflect critically on the half century that divides us from the then standard of the orchestra. Ma vlast was crucial for Vaclav Talich; he returned to it again and again throughout his life, presenting it with the Czech Philharmonic many times in every season, both in Prague and on domestic tours. It was not a work just for special celebratory occasions as it is now, but much more part of everyday consciousness of national identity and the roots of society. We should also remember how Talich used to present Ma vlast at the beginning of the occupation and Second World War and the emotional response of audiences, then how and why he played it in the Reich, and how he later suffered for alleged collaboration after the liberation. We must remember the critical scepticism that he attracted because of his broken health at the time of his short return to the Philharmonic, the time when this recording was made. All of this is hidden somewhere in the studio recording of Ma vlast made in the June and July of 1954. Shortly afterwards Talich was to conduct it for the last time.

Perhaps rather than "hidden", we could say that all this is on the one hand in some way reflected in the recording, but then again naturally not in an obvious audible way. We listen and reflect on the usual tension between the pure interpretation of notes and the insertion of other meanings into the music. What is certain is that Talich's late conception of Ma vlast is not idyllically comfortable. It is evident that what we hear is important music, with its own special and striking epic quality and pathos. It is also clear that the conductor was not holding back from great contrasts in dynamics, expression and in tempos, that he was not afraid of agogics, accelerandos, expansive sound, mystery and an almost frenzied excitement--in other words romanticism with all that it involves. His performance is anything but restrained or detached--it manages to be explosive, but also at other points rendered almost surprisingly calm. The conductor's conception can be more easily recognised in the different turning-points in the music and transition sections than in its overall course in the long sections. It is the conception of a musician who was not so much wrestling with every note as working comprehensively with the many possibilities of what to stress emotionally, where to place weight and meaning.

If Ancerl's Ma vlast is already as international as his other recordings, Kubelik's historic recording of 1990 is epically exultant, and various versions by some other contemporary conductors are beautifully balanced, then Tallich's is above all balladic. Talich'a Ma vlast on the 1954 recording is full of contrast and struggle, with one climax in the part Z ceskych luhu a haju [From Bohemian Meadows and Glades] and another in the Hussite Chorale. It is music that evokes the breadth of imagined film shots, music that has the quality of historical and operatic fantasy, it is rarely lightened, but is heroic and rhapsodic in an interior rather than superficial way; it is definitely not absolutely objective, pure music, but on the contrary a music that is entirely programmatic, although not in the sense of the description of events so much as in the programmatic character of idea, design and goal.

Talich and the Philharmonic--this is above all a legend, alive in memories and handed down feelings, given by his personal charisma and his relative contribution to a standard of play that was originally, in the early years of the 20th century, still much lower than we can easily imagine today. With the Philharmonic Talich plays Ma vlast as it is written and as it is usually played, without curious excesses, but to the full, truly symphonically. The release of the historic recording is a record of the struggles of a great artist. When we listen to the disk, however, rather than excitement over ravishing details what comes to mind is the question of how to distinguish between what is the real sound of the orchestra and what are the limitations imposed by the recording, and how to distinguish between what is timeless and what is only conditioned by its time.

Technology today works miracles, but the fact that something is an artificially digitalised recording is still always inevitably revealed at the end, in the moment when there is suddenly an empty silence ...