One’s response to Zdenek Fibich’s work is going to be predicated upon
a musical version of a glass half-full or half-empty. Half full if you
hear music that revisits tried and tested forms and formulas without
striving for originality or experimentation instead writing attractive
and easily appealing pieces. Half-empty if the shades of Smetana or
Dvorák hang too heavily with Fibich’s limitations laid bare for all
to hear.
Personally, I support the half-full view but even his most ardent sympathisers
would have trouble arguing that he is not the lesser composer to those
two great masters. Outside the region of his birth I suspect the opportunities
to hear his major works in the concert hall - let alone opera house
- are all but non-existent. With the recent publication of the 2013
BBC Proms Prospectus I had a quick look for Fibich in the Proms archive.
I know this is a far from scientific or balanced instant survey but
it
is the most complete concert archive of the most consistently
imaginative Classical Music festival in the world. Fibich has had
one
performance of
one work - the Overture: A Night at Karlstein
(Castle), Op. 26 – and you have to go back to 1906 to find that! Does
he merit that degree of neglect? – absolutely not – so all the more
thanks for this new disc which purports to be Volume 1 of the orchestral
works.
On disc Fibich has fared somewhat better – not that hard in the given
circumstances – but choices are still few and far between. Naxos competes
with itself in the form of a 1999 disc from Andrew Mogrelia of Symphonies
1 and 2 (8.553699).
Järvi
recorded all three in Detroit for Chandos and these are still available
in various re-combinations. There is also a well-regarded historical
set - recorded in the 1950s and early 1960s mainly in mono - from
Karel
Šejna.
The only other version I have heard is again on Supraphon (32CO-1091)
from Petr Vronský and the Brno State Philharmonic – an analogue recording
dating from 1984. So the field - together with Bohemia’s Woods - is
pretty much open. The conductor is Marek Štilec – in his mid-twenties
when this recording was made – at the helm of the Czech National Symphony
Orchestra.
The disc does not start very auspiciously – Fibich was undoubtedly finding
his symphonic feet when he wrote this firstsymphony at the age of 27.
Form, and his handling of it is not as fluent as it would become. This
is most apparent in the rather over-extended serious opening movement.
Pastoral-Heroic is the most succinct definition I can come up with.
The themes, as so often with Fibich, have echoes of Brahms out of Dvorák
but his handling of them is just too earnest and academic. Štilec is
at his least impressive in the entire disc here. The music simply plods
along. Timings rarely tell the whole story but Štilec stretches this
movement out to 16:14 in comparison to Vronský’s 12:10. This slower
tempo makes the entire work ‘front-end’ heavy – the final three movements
barely reach the twenty minute mark in total. I have to say Vronský
does not feel
that much faster. With no score to hand I wonder
if a judicious cut has been applied? Crucially the Brno performance
has much more light and shade as well as a fluent rubato. Štilec is
painfully literal. In this he is not helped by a cinematic recording
style which gives the orchestra a rather clinical glare albeit allowing
a lot of inner detail to register. It also deprives them of being able
to play very quietly. Not that the Supraphon engineering in 1984 would
have won any awards but it does allow for a more atmospheric and integrated
sound from the orchestra.
Fortunately, things do improve significantly from that movement on.
In part I am sure this is because Fibich’s writing is better. The Scherzo
is placed second and while not overtly Bohemian in the way that similar
movements by Dvorák were, it captures the essence of a folk-polka most
appealingly. Again Vronský is substantially faster but Štilec’s weightier
approach simply feels earthier rather than stuck in the mud. I do like
the fact that the Czech National Symphony Orchestra is audibly an orchestra
from this part of the world. That might seem like a banally obvious
thing to say but I lament the loss of regional individuality in the
sound good orchestras make. These Czech wind and brass players are clearly
perpetuating the performance traditions of their musical ancestors and
to my ears that makes it all the better.
Without a doubt Fibich is at his best when he is trying to be least
formal. The slow movement is an adagio with a sub-heading
alla romanza.
In essence it becomes a most appealing song-without-words with bardic
harp chords accompanying woodwind-led songs. I particularly like the
duetting clarinets around the 2:00 mark (track 3). Štilec is very good
here at moulding the musical phrase although the relative glare of the
recording and the focus it gives to the front desks of the strings diminishes
the charm – the ‘package’ presented by Vronský with fractionally more
poise and a more integrated orchestral picture is again to be preferred.
Štilec does win out in the festive finale. Not Fibich’s finest compositional
hour as there are rather too many sequential scalic passages that smack
of page-filling. At least here the brashness of the recording, the virtuosity
of the playing and Štilec’s injection of extra pace makes one forget
or at least forgive the shortcomings even if Vronský’s presto coda brings
his interpretation to an exciting close.
The ‘filler’ –
Impressions from the Countryside Op.54 - proves
to be the reason collectors might well consider this disc. Douglas Bostock
did record this work on ClassicO CLASSCD255 with the Carlsbad Symphony
Orchestra. Again, that’s a performance I have not heard and one that
is currently available as a download or an expensive secondhand CD.
The Orchestral Suite as an independent musical form is something of
an anachronism today. Yet, in the 19
th Century it provided
composers with a vehicle to write a set of related movements without
the ‘burden’ of symphonic expectation. In many ways this lighter remit
suited a composer such as Fibich very well. In the twenty years since
he wrote the First Symphony – and just two before he died – Fibich had
honed his craft significantly and had a far better sense of his own
strengths as a composer. These are all evident here: assured if not
revelatory orchestration, an appealing melodic gift and just enough
harmonic spice to prevent his writing sounding superficial or trite.
Ultimately this might be considered high class light music but this
is not a pejorative remark in my mind. Perhaps his younger contemporaries
such as Suk or Novak would expand the emotional and technical boundaries
of such Suites but Fibich sets himself a goal which is well achieved.
Each of the movements has a simple almost naďve title but Fibich skilfully
does not write music inappropriate to either that title or the scale
implied. So the opening
Moonlit Night is a gentle study in
flowing string writing with definite echoes of
Peer Gynt. Perhaps
here Štilec shows his inexperience by being too literal and again the
fluorescent-tube-lit recording allows less poetry in than one imagines
exists. The second movement is simply called
Country Dance
in the manner of a
Sousedská beloved of Dvorák in his sets
of
Slavonic Dances. Here one is really able to relish the characterful
orchestral playing. Štilec finds good contrasts in the instrumental
interplay. I love the mellow horn sound. They feature again at the opening
of the third movement;
Highlands Ho. The gentle horn-calls
and flowing lower strings inevitably evoke Smetana but without any great
detriment to Fibich. The climax is rather imposing perhaps evoking a
mountain vista before sinking swiftly back into the hushed atmosphere
of the opening. The closing two movements are substantially longer than
the three that precede them. The penultimate one is called
Fireside
Talk. This opens with a perky clarinet led dance theme in ľ time.
Quite what the story being told around the fire is I can’t imagine.
This movement is clearly sectionalised – different stories perhaps?
– all characterised by a far lighter and more subtle orchestration than
Fibich employed in the Symphony. I particularly enjoyed a mournful tale
told by a beautifully woody bassoon (track 8 3:40) over gently pulsing
strings. For me this is the highlight of the disc – some enchanting
playing meeting a moment of compositional inspiration lovingly orchestrated.
The suite closes with a
Village Dance. This is not immediately
the high-spirited affair one might assume it would be. In fact Fibich
treats the melodic material rather more academically than seems wholly
appropriate. His technical resources have by now developed to such a
degree that they allow him to explore the potential of the music much
more effectively than in the earlier work. It is a slightly downbeat
ending to the suite with the tacked-on coda sounding more dutiful than
inspired.
Ultimately a solid rather than thrilling opening to this series but
one with enough interest to encourage a collector to return. It is to
be hoped that greater interpretative finesse and recording subtlety
will reveal unknown strengths in this composer as the series develops.
Nick Barnard
