Vaclav Talich--Special Edition 7.

Vaclav Talich--Special Edition 7

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Antonin Dvorak

Symphonic Poems based on ballads by K. J. Erben--The Water Goblin, The Noon Witch, The Golden Spinning Wheel, The Dove

The Czech Philharmonic, Vaclav Talich. Production: Jana Gonda, Petr Kadlec, Petr Vit. Text: Eng., Ger., French, Cz. Recorded: 14. 7. 1949, Studio Domovina, Prague (Water Goblin), 4. 4. 1951 (Noon Witch), 20. 3. 1951 (Golden Spinning Wheel), 2.-3. 4. 1951 (Dove) Rudolfinum, Prague. Released 2006. TT: 76:27. ADD mono, digitally remastered. 1 CD Supraphon SU 3827-2.

Dvorak's symphonic poems continue to provoke a certain amount of controversy. There are those who claim that they lack real dramatic power and fail to be as convincing as Smetana's poems, and that certain passages are distinctly problematic in composition. I myself do not consider these doubts justified, although everyone has a right to his opinion! I strongly agree with those who believe without reservation that these four pieces belong to the best traditions of Czech music. A great deal, however, depends on the interpretative view of the performer. Listening to a wide range of very different interpretations we find that it is here that the whole problem liesl Vaclav Talich manages to extract the great musical riches of these Dvorak scores, bringing to life scenes full of drama, but also lyricism and love--erotic and maternal, sincere and false. Admittedly, he never presented these poems as a complete set--one of them was always missing in his programmes. And even Talich showed a certain lack of faith sometimes--for example (at least in this recording) he cut the three-part musical description of bringing back to life of Dornicka in The Golden Spinning Wheel to one, and truncated the wedding scene after the beginning of the same poem. With all respect to the great director, these retouches, while made with the best intentions, now seem more or less embarrassing. The contrast represented by the perfectly expressively worked though complete versions by Chalabala or Kubelik makes this very clear. Despite this, Talich must take a great deal of the credit for the popularity of these often unjustly under-rated pieces! He loved them passionately and insisted on putting them in his concert programmes. The recording of the poems he made for Supraphon at the turn of the 1940s/50s was a major step. He also included them (apart from The Golden Spinning Wheel) on one of his first "return" concerts with the Czech Philharmonic at the Prague Spring in 1954 (this recording also exists on CD). The recording of The Water Goblin was made first--in 1949 and not yet on tape, while the remaining three poems were recorded in 1951 using what was already more modern technology, as is audible in this edition as well. For years to come it was the only recording of Dvorak's poems broadcast on the radio and available on records--on old brittle standard records, and then on LPs, except for The Water Goblin which was never brought out on LP! With the advent of stereo these records entirely disappeared from the market, since the new recording by Chalabala appeared in 1961, and for many years Talich's recordings of Dvorak's poems were unobtainable. It was only with the first edition on CD in 1993 that all four once again shone in their full beauty and became a reminder of the greatness of Talich's art. This CD was one of the still famous "postal" series (so called because of the reproductions of postage stamps on the booklets) consisting of more than 100 compact discs successively published to mark the 100th anniversary of the Czech Philharmonic, The current new edition presents these works in new digital versions--the quality remains roughly the same as in the "postal" edition, but the Water Goblin has come out rather better because in the first edition the technological possibilities for treatment of the old recording were more limited. One of the themes considered with reference to critics of the period by the editor and author of the text in the booklet, Petr Kadlec, is Talich's capacity to structure scores in terms of sound. This talent is one of the reasons for the success of these sometimes under-rated Dvorak scores.